


BLUSH!!

by TheHaruWhoCanRead



Series: Coming Out Karasuno [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gay, LGBT, M/M, Manga, Shounen-ai, Yaoi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 14:26:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8059804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHaruWhoCanRead/pseuds/TheHaruWhoCanRead
Summary: How accurate is shounen-ai? What about yaoi? Can it work in real life?Hinata isn't sure. But the more he reads of BLUSH!!, the manga he bought for his recently out-of-the-closet friend Kenma, the more he wants to find out. It's something about the characters. One blond, one redhead. One shy, one extrovert. One gay, one not. They look so happy on the cover. So damn happy. Armed with his BL manual, Hinata heads to Tokyo to spend a few nights at Kenma's place. Can shounen-ai work in real life?Hinata has to know.





	1. VOLUME ONE: A Whole Level for BL

**Author's Note:**

> This is a spiritual sequel to my other fic, [OUT!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5107319/chapters/11749094), which you can read in this series. It isn't essential reading by any means. OUT! is the story of how Yamaguchi came out of the closet with the help of Oikawa. This is a new story about Hinata and Kenma. 
> 
> It'll be a bit more mature than OUT! was, and also a little more silly in parts, but I think it'll all work out. Admin notes:
> 
> New readers, Taiga is Yamaguchi's boyfriend, introduced in OUT!. It's not necessary to know any more than that for this story.
> 
> Kenma also came out to Hinata during OUT! There ends the foundational information you need.
> 
> Timeline wise, it's Winter Vacation from school in between qualifiers for the Spring High and Nationals. That places us somewhere around new year. To be confirmed in a coming chapter.
> 
> I hope you enjoy! Volume One is called THE FORMULA FOR LOVE.

Shouyou was about to drown himself in coca cola.

But he thought that _maybe_ , if he just kept drinking and drinking and drinking forever, he wouldn't have to speak again. He'd never have to admit why he'd brought Yamaguchi and Yachi to this McDonald's after practice. He'd never have to say the words out loud, and have to blush the same color red as the coke label.

Those words. Those _crazy_ words.

'I need help buying Boys Love manga'.

 _Keep drinking, keep drinking._ This could be his blissful last moment before he passed into a sugar coma, and his two friends would never know he was about to ask them _that_.

Dead, normal Shouyou.

That's what he'd be in their memory.

Not living, BL-buying, weirdo Shouyou.

He felt the cup getting lighter in his hand by the second. He ignored Yamaguchi and Yachi's ever-more-frantic expressions as he drew every last drop of liquid through the straw. His lungs were burning, he could feel his face beginning to turn purple, his brain was giddying from lack of oxygen. And then, when the drink was finally finished, a long and gurgling _slurrrrrrrp_ sound filled the entire restaurant.

It was like the cup was filled with a dozen tiny woodpeckers, all trying to drill their way out at the same time.

"Hin...Hinata?" Yachi said, her eyebrows so high on her forehead they'd disappeared beneath her fringe. "Are you okay?"

Yamaguchi was holding his hands out, palms-first.

"I really think you should—"

Shouyou couldn't take it any more.

He yanked the straw from his mouth and took a deep, desperate breath. It whistled through his teeth and tickled his throat as he sucked it down.

"Huuuuah!"

Like he'd just surfaced from a shipwreck. Like someone had just revived him after hours of CPR.

Someone might need to, yet.

"Breathe!" Yamaguchi finished. "Hinata, what the hell?"

He coughed through the next few breaths, shaking away the flush in his face.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm just nervous."

"Nervous?" Yachi said, and she and Yamaguchi shared a look.

Shouyou knew what it meant. It was a brave move to try and out-nervous Yachi and Yamaguchi, Karasuno's mascots for anxiety. But he was pretty confident of following through on it today. After all, Yachi was a lot more settled as team manager now. And ever since Yamaguchi's very public coming out earlier in the year, he'd found a lot more confidence in himself.

So _this_ is what it felt like to be the most frightened one in the room.

Normally, he'd paper over it with bluster and a cocky grin.

 _Normally_ , he'd whack a few volleyballs about. Collar Kageyama to toss to him and smack his worries away until his palms were red and raw.

But this was something not even volleyball could fix.

 _Something not even volleyball could fix_.

It sickened him that such a thing existed.

"Hinata," Yamaguchi said, forcing a smile. "There's nothing to be nervous about. It's just us! Yacchan and Yamaguchi!"

Yachi nodded her head. Viciously and insistently, desperate for him to know it was okay.

"Exactly!" she said. "What's got you so tense?"

"Tense," Shouyou said, staring down at his empty cup.

Sometime between finishing it and just now, he'd crushed it into a flat piece of wax cardboard. Little pieces of crushed ice were spilling from the sides of it and on to the table.

"I...I need..." he said, but couldn't finish.

 _I need help buying BL manga_.

Easy words!

_I need help buying BL manga!_

"I need heh—"

He choked on the word and shook his head.

— _ellllp buying BL manga_ , he finished wordlessly.

"Hinata," Yachi said, searching for his eyes.

He met them. He met her lovely, comforting eyes.

She smiled at him.

"Just start at the beginning."

He took a breath, and let her words sink in.

The beginning, huh? That wasn't such a bad idea.

"Okay," he said, drawing stick figures in the pool of ice water. "Okay, here we go. So this New Years, I'm going to Tokyo for a few nights to see Kenma. You know that, right?"

Yamaguchi laughed.

"Hinata, you have mentioned this _every_ day at practice since Nationals," he said, and Yachi bit her lip to control a smirk. Yamaguchi threw his voice an octave higher to imitate Hinata's voice. " _Kenma said he's going to toss for me! Kenma and I are going to Tokyo Tower! Kenma said he'll take me to a cat cafe! Kenma's got every video game ever and we're going to play them all!_ Hinata? _Yes_ , we know."

"Right," Shouyou said. "Right, so I'm going to stay with Kenma for a few nights. We're all on the same page there."

He stalled on the next sentence, and it was enough to make him lose all his momentum. For a few moments he sat there, engrossed in his watery stick figures, and said nothing. He could feel Yamaguchi and Yachi swapping looks again.

"And...?" Yachi said.

"And you know that...Kenma...is..." Shouyou trailed off. He _still_ felt like he was spilling a secret, even though Kenma had told him it was okay.

Yamaguchi butted in.

Smart, psychic Yamaguchi.

"Gay?" he said. "Yes, we know that, too."

"He's out to everyone, now," Yachi said. "Right?"

Shouyou nodded.

"Yeah, he said so," he said. "Thanks to Yamaguchi and Oikawa and everything that happened. He came out to his team and to his parents and everything."

"His parents, too?" Yamaguchi said. "I didn't know that."

And for a brief second, Shouyou forgot he was nervous.

His pride in Kenma took over, and a grin cracked his drooping face.

"Yeah!" he said, smiling at Yamaguchi. "And they were so fine with it, too. He was so relieved."

"He didn't mention a word to me," Yamaguchi said.

"Oh, he talked to me the whole way through," Shouyou said.

Yamaguchi smiled back.

"I'm glad you were there for him."

"Yeah!" Shouyou said, beaming. "It was really cool! And anyway—"

He cut himself off as he remembered he was supposed to be _mortified_ right now. Which he was. He really, really was. He let that nervousness and discomfort surge through him, all the way from his belly to his head to his toes and fingers.

"And anyway," he forced himself onward. "I want to get him a gift for letting me stay. But I want it to mean something, you know? Like...I want it to be something he'd like, but something that'll make him laugh, too. And something that will show him that it's okay. You know what I mean. That it's _okay_ that he's gay. That I think it's really cool and that he can be relaxed about it around me because it's all okay. Okay?"

Yachi giggled.

"Okay!" she said. "What are you planning to get?"

Shouyou sucked down another breath.

Maybe he could go and buy another drink. Pretend he was still thirsty and that his bladder wasn't about to explode. That'd buy him a few more seconds of _not_ saying it.

"That's why I asked you here," he said, the words surprising him as they spilled out of him. Leaking out like they were busting at the seams of his embarrassment. Trying to sneak their way through and be done with it. "I need your help."

"Our help?" Yamaguchi said. "With what?"

"To buy some..." gripped the edge of the table. When the words finally slipped out, they were a mumble. Barely more than one syllable. " _Beellemanga_."

"Some what?" Yachi said.

"Come again?" Yamaguchi said.

And Shouyou closed his eyes tight, planted his feet on the floor, and summoned every ounce of courage in his entire body.

"Buy some BL manga!" he said.

 _Loudly_.

Way, way too loudly.

Everyone in the restaurant heard each shouted word. Their table was now the center of attention—suddenly famous within the walls of this McDonald's. The Yaoi table. The table with the Boy's Love boy.

Shouyou ignored the way a mother with three children nearby gave him a filthy look. He ignored the snickers of three middle school boys in the corner. And he tried really, really hard to ignore the bewildered and this-close-to-cackling expressions on Yachi and Yamaguchi's faces.

"BL manga?" Yamaguchi said. Soft. Like a normal person.

"For Kenma?" Yachi said. _Indoor_ voice.

Shouyou would kill for their volume control.

"Yes," he said. "I think it's perfect."

"I'm...not so sure," Yamaguchi said.

Shouyou's heart skipped in his chest.

"Huh?"

"I mean, BL," Yachi said, fiddling with a napkin. "It's not exactly _for_ boys, Hinata. They're more written for girls. Does Kenma even like BL?"

Shouyou puffed up.

"He does!" he said.

Though it was a bit of a lie. He wasn't _totally_ sure Kenma liked BL manga, only that he'd read it before. Their conversation about it was brief, and was mostly about how coming out was nothing like BL manga made it seem. But he definitely said he'd read it before.

And he liked manga in general.

And...and...

"I'm sure of it," Shouyou said, voice firm. "And besides, it's not a _serious_ present. I want to make him laugh. He'll think 'Shouyou is so weird, buying this'. Plus I'll have this embarrassing story to go with it and that'll make him laugh, too. It's a thing we do. It's how his sense of humor works."

Yamaguchi and Yachi exchanged another look.

Shouyou frowned.

That was at least three looks they'd exchanged since arriving.

"I mean, that does sound kind of cute," Yamaguchi said.

Yachi giggled, hand across her mouth.

"It's precious," she said. "Now I've heard that."

"As long as you're not buying it for the wrong reasons," Yamaguchi said. Shouyou straightened, and paid extra close attention. He'd learned to listen to Yamaguchi about this stuff. Yamaguchi had been through almost every kind of good and bad experience with coming out, and being gay, and being _famously_ gay in Japan. When he spoke about this stuff, it was like listening to Ushijima talk about volleyball. Or Nishinoya talk about girls. Or Tsukishima talk about something boring.

Yamaguchi folded his arms.

"Like, you know. _Oh, Kenma's gay. He'll love this manga about gay stuff._ "

Shouyou went red and shook his head.

"Not at all," he said, though he couldn't be sure that was completely right. He definitely couldn't explain why this was the right thing to do, but he _felt_ it. He had good gut instincts, and he knew Kenma.

This wasn't a mistake. He wouldn't be offended.

"You're sure?" Yachi said.

Shouyou set his mouth in a firm line.

"I'm sure."

Yachi and Yamaguchi exchanged their fourth look. Then, after a few moments of wordless conversation—Shouyou had no idea how they did it—they reached an agreement.

Yachi turned back, a sinister grin on her face.

She leaned forward, close to Shouyou's face.

"Then you're in luck," she said. "You've come to one of Japan's foremost experts."

Yamaguchi nodded.

"It's true. She's always exchanging recommendations with Taiga."

Shouyou's heart raced, and he felt sunshine creep back into his smile.

"Really?"

"I could run university courses," she said. "And Taiga is no slouch, either. Yamaguchi, could you call him? Have him meet us?"

"Meet us?" Shouyou said. "Where?"

Yamaguchi yanked his phone from his pocket and busied himself calling his boyfriend. Yachi's grin twisted even further, and she spread her hands out wide. She looked like a wizard trying to conjure lightning. Moses ordering the seas to part.

"At the greatest place on earth."

 

* * *

 

 

"A whole level for BL!" she said, bowing as they reached the top of the stairs.

Shouyou's eyes sparkled as he took in the view.

The top level of Torono town bookstore was dedicated entirely to Doujin and BL manga. Shelves and shelves filled with hand-drawn boys making out with one another. Hugging. Cuddling. Having—he gulped—sex with each other.

And the people!

A dozen or more girls were wandering the isles of the BL level, perusing the samples and studying the back covers of thousands of different manga. It was the busiest Shouyou had ever seen a shop in Torono _be_.

"Welcome to gay erotica heaven," Taiga said from Yamaguchi's side. He walked over to Shouyou's shoulder and began pointing. They were roughly the same height, and Shouyou had no trouble seeing things exactly from his perspective. "It goes like this."

Taiga pointed to the far left wall.

"Doujinshi over there if you're looking for sexy versions of your favorite manga or anime."

He pointed to the middle shelves.

"Shounen ai there if you're looking for something mild."

And then he waved his hand in a wide arc.

"Everything from here to the far wall is proper Yaoi. If you're not interested in seeing _lots_ of erections, don't go over there."

Yamaguchi slapped Taiga's shoulder.

"Behave," he said.

"Yes," Taiga said, slinking beneath Yamaguchi's arm. "One must really mind their manners in the _Yaoi section._ "

"He's right, though," Yachi said, leading Shouyou toward the shounen ai. "Maybe we should start over here."

Shouyou followed her, his head swimming with all kinds of thoughts and feelings. He felt like he was surrounded by a kaleidoscope of bright lights and colors, all trying their best to confuse and overwhelm him. He tried to pretend like the girls in the store weren't looking at him. He stuck close to Yachi's side, and made sure Taiga and Yamaguchi never fell too far behind, either.

That turned out to be easy.

They both found the whole thing _hilarious_.

“This one's nice,” Yachi said, lifting a small white book. Shouyou moved closer to inspect it, and read the title out loud.

“The Cuddle Club,” he said. “It sounds a bit kid-ish.”

Taiga muffled his laugh behind his hand, and Yamaguchi reached out to read the back cover.

“Ah,” he said. “Going by the lack of shirts on these guys, I think 'cuddle club' is probably a euphemism.”

Yachi snatched it back, her face the definition of indignant.

“It's about four guys at an all-boys school who start a club to provide intimacy to their starved classmates! It's lovely. It's about companionship across gender divides.”

“Yeah,” Taiga said, cheeky grin on his face. “And also about making straight guys come in their pants. It gets pretty hot around chapter six or seven.”

Yachi took a breath, then stopped.

“Oh, yeah. I forgot that part.”

“How could you?” Taiga said. “It's the _best_ part.”

“Well, anyway,” she said, tossing it back on the pile. She led them away, and Shouyou noticed a girl nearby follow them to the table and pick it up straight away. Taiga had, apparently, made a sale.

They moved ahead of him a little, all three arguing about what they should try out next, and Shouyou tuned it out. He kept getting distracted by the rows on rows of covers, and fascinated by the pictures there. He spent a second staring at two line-art guys that were wrapped in a tight embrace, sorting through how it made him feel.

He couldn't quite identify it. He was embarrassed about being here, for sure. He was a little bit scared that he might be doing the wrong thing in the first place, but not much. He'd expected this kind of thing might make him feel uncomfortable—maybe even a bit sick. But now that he was here...no.

His stomach was completely un-turned.

All he saw was manga with guys on the cover.

What was the big deal?

He walked a row over, keeping his trio of chaperones in sight, and perused the shelves. The titles were creative and funny. _The Just Ass League,_ about barely-dressed super heroes. _HeHeHe_ , about a high school guy who falls in love with a stand-up comedian. _Men Are From Mars, Let's Go To Mars!_ about a sexy space mission.

And then...

_BLUSH!!_

The single word title stood out first of all, but it was the picture beneath it that caught Shouyou's eye. He lifted it from the rack and took it all in.

A tall blond boy stood on the left, his right arm dangling. He was looking off frame, over at something far away. Beside him was a shorter guy with red hair, pretending he was looking in the other direction but actually sneaking a look at blonde guy's hand. His left little finger was reaching out, stopping _just_ short of touching blonde guy's...

He flipped it and read the description.

 

 

_Shino has a plan, and it involves his best friend since elementary school. The boy who now studies chemistry with him at the same university._

_Kaoru._

_Sweet, shy Kaoru. Sweet, tall, cute, slender Kaoru._

_Shino has known about Kaoru's feelings for other men for a long time, but one thing Kaoru has never known is love. True, romantic love. Every time Shino sets him up with a promising boy, Kaoru turns them down for one reason or another._

_But Shino knows chemistry, and he knows that love is just about perfecting the formula. And this time, he's got it right for sure. A clear set of foolproof steps. The formula for falling in love. And it all hangs from that first blush._

_But which one of them will blush first?_

 

 

He felt his heart flutter.

The manga was wrapped in plastic, so he couldn't rip it open right and now and start reading. But that description had him so enticed, so _interested_ , he needed to know what happened next.

The formula for love?

What the hell was it!

And WHO WOULD BLUSH FIRST?

He flipped it back over and found he instantly knew which was Shino and which was Kaoru. That, he thought, was probably a sign this was a good manga. The artist knew what they were doing.

“Hinata?” Yachi said. “Whatcha got there?”

Shouyou's whole body jolted so hard he nearly dropped the book.

“Oh,” he said, smiling and passing the book to Yachi. “It's called 'BLUSH!!'. Have you heard of it?”

She took it and turned it over.

“Oh, I've heard of it but not read it. Taiga?”

Taiga looked over her shoulder, chewing on his bottom lip.

“I don't think so. I've read, like, three about botanists but none about chemists. It sounds familiar, though. Have they been talking about it on the forums, Yachi?”

“I think so,” she said, whipping out her smart phone. A few clicks later and she had the entry up, glancing at ratings and reading reviews. “It gets a four point eight out of five. I kind of can't believe I haven't read it yet.”

Shouyou kept looking at the two guys on the cover.

A blonde. A red head.

“I think...I'll get this one,” he said.

Yamaguchi grinned at him.

“It sounds really nice. And the rating says it's pretty mild in the first volume. The ones after that get a bit more risque, but even they're fairly tame. So it'll be more about kissing and less, er—”

“Happy trails and...fluids,” Taiga said.

Yamaguchi slapped him across the back of the neck.

“Volume _s_ with an 's'?” Shouyou said. “There are more?”

“Yeah,” Yachi said, plucking two more books from the shelf. “Right here. Volumes two and three.”

Shouyou checked the price tags.

Six hundred and fifty yen each.

He checked his pockets.

A single 2000 yen note.

“I'll get them all.”


	2. The Call of the Manga

He accidentally let the front door slam, and his mother heard it.

“Shouyouuuu,” she called from the kitchen. “How are you?”

Shouyou's joints snap-locked together at once.

“N-Normal!” he yelled back, and he sprinted for his room.

Shouyou hurled his backpack onto his bed like there was a live grenade inside. He slid the door shut behind him, wishing there was some way to lock it, and held it closed with white-knuckled fingers.

What was he thinking.

_What_.

This was his home. His parents lived here. His sister lived here. Guests and neighbors and extended family paraded through the house every other day. It was the one place in the world where the chances of him bumping into someone he knew were one hundred percent.

And he'd brought three volumes of BL manga into his room.

He turned around, leaning against the door, chest lurching in-and-out like he'd sprinted here from Akihabara.

His bag was half-open on the bed.

Zipper parted like a demented smile. The dull-brown paper bag from the bookstore jutting out of it like a tongue made of...gay guys. They give it to you in a plain paper bag, Yachi explained to him, so you can carry it home without getting looks.

Great. Solid logic. So far so good.

But now he _was_ home, he had no idea what he was supposed to do with it.

He looked about for hiding places. A desk—scattered with paper and books already, but still the most obvious hiding place in history. His mattress—that his mother turned-out and re-bedded all the time. The wardrobe—stacked with clothes and sports equipment, and _always_ foraged through by his sister when she wanted to play. His shelves—mostly empty, and not big enough to hide a great big paper bag.

He clenched his teeth and bit back a grunt.

Why was it all so bare? He'd never noticed he lived in such an empty space before. His room had always been a place to sleep. Somewhere he mostly spent with his eyes closed. Having too much stuff in there was a waste because he'd never use it, anyway.

His fist tightened.

_Idiot_ Shouyou!

Didn't it ever occur to him that he'd need to hide something one day? Sure, maybe not yaoi manga specifically, but...some kind of teenager thing. Alcohol maybe, or drugs even. A deadly weapon. A body. _Something_?

He blew out a long, long sigh.

Any of those would be easier to explain than BLUSH!!

And besides, hiding it was only half the problem. There was another thing—a much more complicated thing—that was clouding up his brain.

He took a few steps forward and reached for the paper bag.

His fingertips tingled as they got closer, and he blinked against a surging feeling in his belly and chest. It was like the nearer he got to it, the hotter the room became. Like some kind of strange force was acting on him.

He closed his eyes.

Years ago, he'd sat down to watch Lord of the Rings with his friends from middle school. He'd fallen asleep somewhere around halfway—movies weren't his thing—but there was one part that stuck in his head and now wouldn't leave him alone.

That ring, and the way it whispered. The way the wizard-guy had warned the little-guy not to listen to the way it called out. That barely-there sound that kept begging the hobbit man to _please_ just put on the ring.

That's what this felt like.

A magnetic kind of feeling. Like a trance. Dark magic.

Dark, forbidden yaoi magic.

_Stop it_ , he told himself. _It's paper. And ink._

But the feeling wouldn't go away. It'd been bugging him the whole way home. Ever since he'd read the back of the cover and been teased with the storyline that was locked beneath the shrink-wrapped plastic.

 

_A clear set of foolproof steps. The formula for falling in love._

 

It was calling to him like the ring did to the hobbit guy.

The formula for love. Locked away inside a BL manga.

The draw of reading something he felt like he wasn't _supposed_ to read was overwhelming. It was like someone had left a great big envelope with the word 'CLASSIFIED' stamped across it sitting out in the open. Speaking just too loudly as they turned their back on it. 'Oh, I hope nobody sees the contents of this TOP SECRET DOCUMENT'.

His hand shook as he lowered it on to the paper bag, fingertips twitching one at a time on to the waxy-smooth surface. It was so _cold_.

_Hide it_ , he yelled at himself.

_Read it_ , his self yelled back.

Maybe he wasn't the hobbit guy. Maybe he was the other one—the little monster that coughed all the time. Wasn't he always arguing with himself? What was it he was always calling the Ring?

His _precious_?

The bag was in Shouyou's hands, now. He stared at it, like he was waiting for it to speak. He strained his ears, listening for the whispers. A little voice from inside. The voice of Shino, or Kaoru maybe. Promising to tell him everything he wanted to know if only he'd open the—

VVVVVVVFFFFSSSSSSSTTTTTTT.

Shouyou's whole body jolted as the buzzing sound crackled through the air. Loud as a jet engine flying low overhead. Loud as if someone had set off two air horns, one at each ear. He _threw_ the paper bag on to the floor and spun around, hands up and ready to fight what was surely some kind of mutant jackhammer/bee hybrid.

His heart _thudded_ into his ribcage once.

Twice. Three times. Then a bunch more.

_Vffssst_.

There it was again. Much quieter this time. Much more familiar. He felt himself wilt into a puddle as he recognized the sound of his phone vibrating in his backpack.

Someone was texting him.

“Craaaap,” he said under his breath.

He dug around in his bag with shaking fingers until he found the phone and then flipped it open. Two messages were blinking at him, both from Kageyama.

 

_Oi. Mr Takeda gave us the gate keys. Come practice since you'll be gone tomorrow._

 

And then a follow-up.

 

_Unless you're too tired from this morning_.

 

Something about Kageyama's name seemed to snap him out of his BL trance. The whispers were gone, and all he could concentrate on was firing back a reply.

 

_YEAH RIGHT. Bet I can beat you there_.

 

Kageyama was fast to reply.

 

_I'm already on my way dumbass_.

 

Hinata snorted and snapped his phone shut.

Yes. _Yes_ , this was more like it. Volleyball was the answer. Like a shield he could put up between himself and the call of the Manga. As long as he was spiking, or jumping, or running, or riding his bike, or arguing with Kageyama...as long as he was _doing_ something, he was fine.

He threw his phone in his backpack and grabbed for it, but as he stepped forward his toe hit something hard.

BLUSH!! was still on the floor, out in the open.

He scanned his room one more time, but he already knew he couldn't risk leaving it behind. His mother and sister were both home, and the chance they'd find it in here was a lot bigger than anyone finding it in his backpack at the school gymnasium.

He snatched it up and buried it deep in his bag, the sound of the zips closing as sweet as the sound of a safe door _clanking_ shut.

He slid his door open and leaped into the hallway.

“Mom!” he yelled. “Back later!”

He was sure she said something like 'okay' or 'have fun' as he sprinted for his bike.

 

***

 

“One more!”

Shouyou shouted the words out of the pit of his belly.

They crackled and popped as his voice rattled through his dry, raw throat. Sweat was stuck to him like a slimy second skin, soaked into his daggy practice clothes and seeping through his bright orange hair. Every one of his muscles—even the ones that had nothing to do with volleyball—felt like they were on fire.

But he ran anyway.

The ball was already falling toward Kageyama's up-raised hands. He had less than a second to be in the air, flying, arm up and ready for the spike. Two great, lunging steps took him within striking distance, and then...

He leaped.

He was flying so high and fast he could hear the air whipping past his ears. Feel it cooling the sweat on his skin and shaking it loose from his hair.

This was it. His favorite place to be.

Up here, for this split second, it was just him and the ball. He didn't have to worry about a thing. Not breathing, not thinking. Not even gravity mattered.

_Bring it to me._

And then the ball was on his palm. Slamming in to it, shattering the quiet as it _cracked_ against his hand and _whacked_ into the court. His feet hit the floor a fraction of a second later, and he stared after the ball as it careened into the back wall of the gym.

Right next to his backpack.

His heart seized up.

 

_Shouyou. Read us._

 

He clenched his eyes closed, ran for the basket filled with volleyballs, and tossed one high over Kageyama's head.

“Again!” he shouted.

He sprinted, leaped, spiked...

 

_It's okay to be curious, Shouyou!_

 

“Again!!”

Run, jump, spike...

 

_Imagine what's inside!_

 

“ _Again!!_ ”

He sucked down oxygen as deeply as he could, but it wasn't working. It was like his lungs had forgotten they had a job to do and were just going through the motions. Zombie lungs. He threw himself into the air on shaking legs, and waited for the ball to come to him. Everything around him was starting to get blurry. His arm felt like a sock on a stick as he whipped it around to hit the ball...

That never came.

His palm _whooshed_ through the air, and he crashed to the ground on jelly legs. He must've looked like a toddler learning to take its first steps as he turned to face Kageyama.

“Oi,” Kageyama said, volleyball tucked against his hip. “What's with you?”

Shouyou braced his hands against his knees and bent at the middle, forcing his body to slow down. He was on fast-forward right now, and he needed to bring it back to normal speed. Maybe even right down to pause.

“I'm—”

He could only manage the one syllable before he needed to take another set of deep, wheezing, _squeaking_ breaths.

“—fine.”

Kageyama fixed him with one of his _faces_ and Shouyou looked away. Kageyama was all about faces. He wasn't so good with words—definitely _way_ worse than Shouyou was—and so he had a set of expressions he used to do a lot of his talking. He had scary ones. Confused ones. Curious ones. Confident ones. There was even a rumor he had a happy one buried in there somewhere.

The face he'd dragged out now was an especially skeptical one.

A face that said 'I've taken a look at the available data and have concluded what you've said is not true. For one thing, you're about to collapse into a pile. You've shouted yourself hoarse. You're asking for spikes faster than I can set them. And you're sweating more fluid than one man ought to be able to hold in the first place. If I had to guess, I'd say you were distracted by the fact there's a BL comic in your backpack'.

Except he only actually _said_ one word.

“Bullshit.”

Shouyou bristled—he hated the way Kageyama swore—and tried to straighten up. He was still huffing, though, and couldn't quite manage to bring himself up to full height. Even if he could, that was only to Kageyama's chest.

“I'm just...”

_Hufffff_.

“...practice...”

_Huffffff._

“...want to...”

_Huffff._

“...do.”

Kageyama's face evolved from 'skeptical' to 'even more skeptical'.

“I don't even know what that means,” he said.

Shouyou laughed.

Big mistake. That was breath he couldn't afford.

He spent a few seconds trying to square the ledger with his lungs, and Kageyama pressed on.

“You're clearly about to die,” he said. “So we're stopping.”

“How...” _huffff_ “...thoughtful.”

“Karasuno loses two unique attacks if you die,” he said. “Or if you get distracted, like you are right now. What's that about?”

Shouyou couldn't stop himself glancing at the backpack again. The whispers weren't as loud now, but there were definitely still there. Calling to him from the darkest depths of his backpack.

 

_Shouyou....Shouyooouuu...._

 

“I don't really know,” he said, finally able to get a whole sentence out without wheezing between each word. “I've just got...a lot of thoughts going through my head.”

“Hm,” Kageyama said. “So get them out.”

Shouyou shook his head.

“It's not that easy.”

“It would be for me,” Kageyama said.

Shouyou let out another deep huff and stared at the gym floor.

Kageyama was smart. In a certain way. Maybe not in a bookish way, or a words-ish way, or a numbers way, or a social way, or...almost any way, really. But put a volleyball in his hands and he was the sharpest thinker in the country. He had a brain that worked quickly and focused tightly on one thing. It was like a laser.

The opposite of Shouyou's.

If Kageyama's brain was a laser, Shouyou's was a barrel of fireworks.

Lots and lots of fireworks. Always thinking about a _ton_ of stuff, all at the same time, expanding from one thing to the next and then winking back to blank so the next firework could go off.

Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—Kageyama was able to shine some of that laser focus through the smoke and flash of Shouyou's thoughts. The words were so simple. 'Just get the thoughts out of your head'. But that's what made them so good as slicing through the murk.

“Just get the thoughts out,” Shouyou said. “Just like that?”

“Right,” Kageyama said. “Are you saying you can't?”

Shouyou straightened up.

“ _No_ ,” he said.

“So _do_ it, then,” Kageyama said. “Take whatever's in your head and do whatever you have to do to get it out of there.”

Shouyou was too tired to get properly fired up, but he felt the rush of something familiar inside. He always felt this way when he talked to Kageyama. It was this _nngnrrrrrhhh_ feeling, somewhere halfway between wanting to kill him and wanting to impress him.

“I will,” he said. “If you can, _I_ can.”

Kageyama's chin lifted a half-centimeter.

It was another one of his faces.

A victory face.

“Not here, though,” Kageyama said, tossing the volleyball into the half-full trolley. “Rest a minute, then go home. You seriously look like you just crawled out of the sea.”

Shouyou looked down at himself.

He _was_ pretty wet with sweat.

“Okay,” he said. “I will.”

Kageyama fetched the rest of the balls himself while Shouyou caught his breath. They walked to the edge of the gym, and with each step closer to his backpack Shouyou felt the call again. The whispers that got louder. Shion and Kaoru, teasing him. _What's the big deal, Shouyou! Just read it!_

He slung the bag over his shoulder, and his entire body ached from the strain as they walked to the front doors. The ring in Lord of the Rings was supposed to be pretty heavy, too.

Kageyama yanked the doors shut and locked them.

“You want me to....” Kageyama trailed off, and looked off to the side. “Wait here, too? Or whatever?”

“Nah,” Shouyou said. “I'll just sit here a while. It's fine.”

“Sure,” Kageyama said.

It took a few seconds for Shouyou to register something odd.

Kageyama was being... _nice_ to him.

“Hey, Kageyama,” he said. “What's with the 'not calling me a dumbass' thing? Are you sick?”

Kageyama's mouth twitched into the _tiniest_ smile.

“Maybe,” he said. Then he shrugged. “It just seemed serious, that's all.”

Shouyou felt a twinge in his gut.

How strangely was he acting if even _Kageyama_ was worried?

“Sure you don't want me to wait with you, dumbass?” Kageyama said.

Shouyou felt his backpack get heavier on his shoulder, and he shook his head.

“Yeah,” he said. “I'll be fine.”

“Better be,” Kageyama said. “Don't slack off in Tokyo.”

He began to jog out through the school gate, and Shouyou called after him.

“As if I would!”

Kageyama was too far away to answer.

Shouyou stood in the quiet for a little while.

_Tokyo_ , he thought. Where Kenma was. Where he was going tomorrow morning—bullet train at 8am.

The wind whipped through his hair and turned the sweat in there ice-cold. He shivered, and leaned down to pick up his bike. His legs were still shaking when he stood back up.

The fireworks in his head were firing.

The voices from the backpack were whispering.

“Fine,” he said, quietly, just in case anyone could hear.

He tightened the backpack strap on his shoulder.

“ _Fine_ ,” he said again.

He checked his phone—just after three in the afternoon—and knew he had about two hours of sunlight left. He wheeled his bike away from the school gates, headed deeper into the grounds and away from prying eyes.

He leaned his bike up against the wall and slumped down against the outside-back wall of the gym. Nobody could see him here. The school gates were shut, and even if they weren't he was completely hidden from sight. Nobody _ever_ came to the back of the gym.

He rested his hand on his backpack for a second, and Kageyama's voice shouldered its way into his head.

_Take whatever's in your head and do whatever you have to do to get it out of there._

He took a deep breath, tore open the zips and yanked the paper bag from inside. He slid BLUSH into his hands and ripped the shrink wrapping from the outside. The tall blond boy and short redhead stared up at him as he released them.

Volume one. Chapter one.

He started reading.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I'm back!
> 
> With sincere apologies for the very very long wait for this story to get underway properly. If you've been in the comments section you might've seen me talking about it, but basically I've had 3 weddings to attend, their associated stag/hens parties, as well as a whole ton of general busy-ness during the months of september and october. It was a bit silly of me to post the first chapter when I knew all that was coming up. STILL! Better that there's only one chapter to go re-read as a refresher, instead of like 8 or 9 haha.
> 
> We're back on track now!


	3. What You Want

_Have you even thought about what_ you _want?_

 

Shouyou's legs pumped the bike pedals as hard as they could. It burned. After wearing himself out at practice earlier, it _worse_ than burned. He could feel his muscles shaking as he forced them to keep pounding, his head down, his eyes squeezed almost shut.

His home was on the other side of a mountain.

A tall, steep, stupid, pain in the ass mountain.

The sheer effort to get from one side to the other was one thing. But the time it took—and the time it gave him to dwell on what he'd just read—was another.

 

 _Have you even thought about what_ you _want?_

 

The line kept going around and around in his head.

He could picture Kaoru's face on the page, the speech bubble hovering just above his lips. His light, long hair fell across his eyes and down each cheek, and his big eyes were wide as could be.

Shouyou didn't know why that one line wouldn't leave him alone.

He'd read through the entire first volume—seven chapters, each one fifty pages long. Actually sat still for almost two hours just to _read_ . It was page after page after page of beautiful drawings and funny words, and the further he got in to it the more he _wanted_ to keep going. The setting sun had beaten him, though, and when it was too dark to see he'd been forced to give up.

Right as Kaoru said that line.

Right before he kissed Shino for the first time.

Shouyou's legs kicked harder against the pedals for a few seconds. Street lights and trees whizzed by so fast they blurred into one long streak.

_Gahhh!_

It was so frustrating!

He'd been following along so _well_ up until then.

Shino—worried for his friend—had cracked the formula for love. It was a beautiful set of pages, too. One page for each of the ten ingredients in the formula. So well drawn and so simple that Shouyou had memorized each one, no problem.

He closed his eyes and ran through them.

 

 _1 – ALONE TIME!_ The formula doesn't work unless it's just the two of you on your own.

 _2 – SHARE INTERESTS!_ Spend that time together doing something you both enjoy.

 _3 – BE COMFORTABLE!_ Lower your defenses! Talk about things you normally wouldn't.

 _4 – BE ATTRACTIVE!_ Look Cute. Look sexy. Make sure he can _see_ your appeal.

 _5 – A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE!_ Show them what life would be like if you could do this all the time.

 _6 – A MOMENT OF VULNERABILITY!_ For a gallant knight to rescue you from!

 _7 – A BRIDGE!_ These are important, somehow?!

 _8 – A MOMENT OF INTIMACY!_ Kiss him!

 _9 – BLUSH!!_ The blush is the key. The blush seals it.

 

And number ten. Well.

Shino couldn't figure out number ten. He knew it had to exist to complete the fomula. He knew it was the key to everything—more important, even, than the blush at number nine. But he couldn't crack that final entry.

Not until right at the end.

When Kaoru leaned in and asked him

 

 _Have you even thought about what_ you _want?_

 

And kissed him right on the lips.

Shouyou squeezed his eyes shut _tighter_ as frustration surged through him. Because the next line was one of those annoying things that writers do. A thing that's supposed to make sense to the person reading it, except without saying it out loud.

During the kiss, Shino's eyes went wide.

And a thought bubble filled almost an entire page.

 

 _Oh_ . That's _number ten_.

 

Except he never said what it was!

Shouyou sped along _faster_.

He knew he was supposed to be able to figure it out. It was obvious from the way the chapter ended on the next page. Item ten was meant to be obvious to someone who read these kinds of things all the time and knew what was going on.

But he was Shouyou! He read text books for just long enough to keep his mother from shouting at him and then went back to playing volleyball. He learned vocabulary from Yachi for just long enough to prove to the team that he was _super duper trying_ to pass his exams and then went BACK TO PLAYING VOLLEYBALL.

He wasn't smart enough to figure this one out.

Who did this author think they _were_ , holding out like that? Their one job—their entire role in this whole manga-BL-process-creation _thing—_ was to write words. But they couldn't even be bothered doing that! It shouldn't be up to _him_ to figure out what they were trying to say. Why the hell have all those buttons on a keyboard if you were just going to ignore them??

Air hissed from the corners of his mouth.

He hadn't paid nearly two thousand yen to be teased! He'd paid it to...well, he'd bought the manga for...

Kenma.

The handlebars of his bike started bouncing in his hands. The seat drummed against his butt as the wheels started _clop-clop-clopping_ over an uneven surface. He locked the pedals backward to pull the bike up, his eyes finally opening up wide to see where he was.

Ah.

The rocky patch at the crest of the mountain. He could see his house from here. Down below was the valley outside of Torono town, quiet and dark, lit by off-yellow street lights. He could hear how _little_ was happening from up here. See how still it was. He felt like he was looking at the surface of a lake, or staring into an enormous, flat mirror. For some reason, it made him want to shout into it. Just to see if it shattered.

 

 _Have you even thought about what_ you _want?_

 

He shook his head and kicked off once more.

All downhill now.

 

* * *

 

 

“Shouyou!” his mother said, one hand on her hip. Scolding posture. “Dinner is _ready_ and I can't smell it over your _stink_. Get cleaned up so we can eat!”

Shouyou scrunched up his face and sniffed at his shirt.

It... _did_ kind of smell.

His little sister, Natsu, appeared from nowhere. She skipped around him in a circle, a bouncing tangle of red hair in a bright green dress.

“Shouyou smells,” she sang. “Shouyou smells. We can't even eat because Shouyou smells.”

Shouyou swatted at her, but she was too fast. Like a little ginger hummingbird with a smart mouth.

Then his father's voice, from somewhere in the Kitchen.

“Come on, Sho,” he said. “It's after six. You know the deal. Everyone at the table and _not_ stinking like a—”

“Okay, okay,” he said, slinging his bag onto his bed and closing his bedroom door. _Tight_. “I'm going.”

Natsu sped for the kitchen.

“Stinking like a what, dad?” she said.

Dad stuck his head around the corner and took a theatrical sniff as Shouyou walked by.

“Like a wet dog,” he said. “Oof, Sho, seriously.”

“Wet dog, wet dog! Shouyou's a smelly puppy!”

Shouyou gritted his teeth and yanked open the bathroom door.

“Okay, I get it!” he said, slamming it behind him.

He stripped out of his clothes—they bunched up and rolled into tight wads of damp fabric—and doused himself under the shower. He lathered himself in body wash, rinsed it off, and then did it _again_ just to be sure. If Natsu was going to sing about him now, it'd have to be about how he smelled like—he checked the label—peach and oatmeal.

He almost made it through scouring the sweat from his hair when _BLUSH!!_ forced its way back in to his thoughts. The writer of the manga had been thorough, and so Shouyou knew exactly what Kaoru's hair smelled like. Watermelon, according to Shino. That'd seemed odd to Shouyou at the time, but he got it, now. Kaoru must use watermelon scented shampoo.

He wiped the water from his eyes.

Stories were full of stuff like that. Little hints that you were supposed to be able to follow through on your own.

He wished he was better at it.

A minute later he was clean and fresh, and he stepped out on to the cold stone floor. His towel was on a rack all the way across the room—of course he hadn't remembered to move it closer—and he trudged toward it on soggy feet. He almost had it in hand when he caught sight of himself in the mirror.

His hair was flattened against his head, dark red now instead of its usual sunshine orange. The only time it _ever_ sat like this was when it was soaking wet.

He left the towel and walked closer to the waist-up mirror. Steam had fogged it, so he rubbed a clear space in the middle with his palm.

He looked different like this. His hair was longer than it seemed when it was spiked up. He tugged at the dangling bits of fringe and swept them sideways, like he'd seen guy celebrities do. Yachi called it _windswept_ hair. It made him look younger, he thought—or maybe just softer. More like a girl.

 

 

_BE ATTRACTIVE! Look Cute. Look sexy. Make sure he can see your appeal._

 

The fourth ingredient in the formula for love. He leaned closer to the mirror and squinted. What made a man attractive, anyway? He tried sucking in his cheeks—was thinner better, or fuller? He tried relaxing the corners of his eyes to make them less intense. He couldn't really do anything with his lips. Was any of it good?

He lifted his bare arm and twitched the muscles in it. He didn't have many. Not in his arm—not anywhere. But the ones he _did_ have you could see really easily. He flexed as many of them as he could and watched them pull tight. Across his chest, across his stomach. Lines and seams popped up everywhere, like his skin was shrink-wrapped over muscle and bone.

Was _that_ good? Or did men need more size than this before they were attractive?

He'd seen his teammates in the club room. Kageyama had seams and lines, too, but his muscles were a lot bigger. Some of them stuck out because they were too bulky to be held back by his skin, whereas Shouyou was so skinny his muscles had nowhere to hide. Tsukishima was kind of the same, though, and _he_ seemed to do just fine with girls. Yamaguchi was somewhere in the middle and he had a _boyfriend_!

Maybe it was—

_Bang bang bang!_

Shouyou nearly hit the ceiling.

“Sho!” Dad yelled through the door. “Dinner is on the _table_.”

“Gahhh, YES,” he yelled back. “Just trying to get my _disgusting smell_ under control, remember?”

He grabbed his towel and dried himself as fast as he could, hands whooshing across his scalp as he dried his hair. When he next looked in the mirror, his usual self was staring back. Spiky, uncontrollable orange hair and wild eyes.

He snorted, wrapped the towel around himself, and sprinted for his bedroom. His legs were still shaking from the ride home.

“There!” he called back into the hall as he yanked on his pajama pants. He left the shirt—he was still too warm from the shower. He could hear them all scraping the dining chairs as they sat at the table, and the tinkling sound of cutlery on plates. “All clean and everyone can eat without _vomiting_.”

They'd started eating by the time he made it into the dining room.

“Ahh, there we are,” Mom said. “Like a human being.”

Dad smirked as he took his place at the table.

“We may have lost a smelly pet,” he said, throwing his voice deep. Like he was in a movie trailer or something. “But we have gained...a _son_.”

“I'm going to miss you all _so_ much this week,” Shouyou said through a mouthful of chicken and vegetables. “Can we talk about something other than how I smell after playing volleyball all day?”

Dad giggled to himself, and Mom took pity on him.

“You were out for a long time today,” she said. “Lots of practice?”

Shouyou swallowed and tried not to look like he was lying.

It surprised him by being super easy.

“Yeah,” he said. “Kageyama and I can get into the gym whenever we want as long as it's light outside, so we were spiking all afternoon. I'm pretty tired.”

Dad looked up.

“Nationals are in January, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You're going pretty hard for something so far off.”

“Nah,” Shouyou said. “This is nothing. Besides, I'm about to miss a few days practice. We were making up for it early.”

Mom chimed in next.

“Isn't Kenma a setter, too? Won't you practice with him?”

Shouyou laughed.

“Maybe a bit. But Kenma is really different to Kageyama. He doesn't like to spend too long playing—he gets tired. I think he mainly plays because his team needs him, but he'd prefer to have more free time.”

“A non-volleyball-obsessed friend,” Dad said. “If I look up I'm _sure_ I'll see pigs.”

Shouyou rolled his eyes.

“I got some new clothes for you,” Mom said, and she smiled at him like she'd just blocked one of his spikes. “They're nice ones, because you're going to the city. Promise me you won't wear a t-shirt and shorts everywhere.”

“Ah, mom,” he said. “I _like_ t-shirts and shorts.”

“Sometimes t-shirts,” Dad said, pointing at Shouyou's bare chest with his chin. Shouyou shrugged and mouthed back at him,  _I'm still hot_.

“It's going to be three degrees on New Years Eve,” Mom said. “You'll freeze to death.”

“Three degrees is a lot.”

“The fridge is set to three degrees,” Dad said. “Want to test it out?”

Natsu giggled.

“You're not _food_ , Shouyou,” she said.

He stuck his tongue out at her.

She stuck hers right back at him.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Mom said. “Just wear them. It's the big city, and they have shirts with buttons on them there. Crazy, I know. But it's how they do it in the big smoke.”

“It's true,” Dad said. “I've seen it on TV.”

“Ha ha,” Shouyou said.

“Darling,” Mom said, leaning forward. “I'm not trying to embarrass you. I just want you to look nice. Put some handsome clothes with your handsome face.”

Shouyou thought back to the bathroom mirror while he chewed on a piece of chicken. His mom was just being a mom. They all said their children were handsome.

But then again—and Shouyou hadn't ever thought about her like this before—she _was_ a woman. That didn't mean she had some secret knowledge about what definitely made men attractive and what definitely didn't, but it _did_ mean she'd probably thought about it before. A whole lot more than Shouyou had, at least.

“Look nice,” he repeated.

Kenma _did_ say it was going to be cold.

“Okay. I promise I'll wear them.”

 

* * *

 

 

He waited until he was sure nobody could walk by his door.

Dad was in the living room watching the late night news. Mom was in there, too, reading the newspaper because she trusted written words more than spoken ones. Natsu was asleep in her room. Or was supposed to be, anyway—she was still bouncing around in there. He could hear it through the walls.

He leaned out into the hallway. _Just_ to make sure nobody had tip-toed to the edge of the doorway to peek inside. Then, when he was happy it was all clear, he leaped for his backpack.

He yanked BLUSH!! from inside and, with movements so quick and precise Kageyama would be jealous, he slipped it beneath the stack of clothes in his travel bag. On top of that he piled the new clothes his mother had bought. Then his hoodie and jacket. Then stuffed his volleyball shoes, sneakers and fancy shoes into the empty corners of the bag.

It was crammed full, now.

 _Nobody_ was getting past the top layer without him knowing.

All at once the strain of the day hit him.

He felt like now that BLUSH!! was safe and secure, he could finally relax. He sagged down on to his bed and deflated like a punctured ball, arms and legs flopping loose like they were made of over-cooked noodles.

Only nine o'clock.

If he wasn't careful, he'd drift off to sleep and wake up at three a.m. with way too much energy. The train for Tokyo didn't leave until eight. He'd go crazy with nothing to do for five whole hours. He needed to stay awake for at least a little longer.

He shook his head back and forth, then grabbed for his phone.

Messages. Contacts.

Kenma.

 

_do you think I smell like a wet dog?_

 

He hit send.

Then another thought hit him.

 

_also i have long pants and 2 button up shirts and a jacket so i can blend in with the tokyo locals. mom says their handsome and she wouldnt lie right lol._

 

He waited.

Kenma would be awake for sure. He'd also be sitting close-by his phone because of course he would. The reply would pop up in three...two...

 

_Hi to you too. I've never smelled a wet dog. I think you probably smell like a person? I've never checked._

 

Then a follow-up.

 

_I'm sure the clothes are handsome but I know nothing about fashion. What do they look like?_

 

Shouyou grinned and sat bolt upright.

He rifled through his bag, undoing all the careful packing he'd just finished, and yanked the new clothes from inside. A pair of long black pants. A white-and-gray checkered shirt. A light, but warm, black jacket covered with zips that didn't even _do_ anything, but looked cool.

He lined them up on the bed to take a shot...

But stopped.

Nobody could tell how they looked while they were laid out on a bed.

_Duh, Shouyou._

He snapped his phone closed, then yanked off pajama shorts. He slipped into the brand-new outfit, fastening the buttons as quickly as his shaky fingers would let him, and then grabbed the phone again. It was an older phone and had no forward-facing camera, but he knew how to position it just right to take a decent selfie.

He flashed a peace sign as he took it.

It turned out okay, even if he was grinning so hard his cheeks had crowded his eyes closed. It was hard for him _not_ to smile like that in photos, though, and Kenma would've seen this exact face dozens of times. Still...maybe one more.

With his free hand, he swept his fringe to the side and tried to get the rest of his hair to settle down a little. He relaxed his cheeks. Let his mouth hang open in a smile, but kept it from taking over his entire face. He stuck out his chin, opened his eyes nice and wide, and...

This one looked way better.

He sent it away without any captions or comments.

By the time he was back in his pajamas, Kenma had replied.

Shouyou's heart jiggled as he smiled at the two words.

 

_Very handsome._


	4. Welcome to Tokyo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS LOOK! Fan art! 
> 
> Meganeko has done some LOVELY drawings of some of these volleyball dorks! Including Taiga, Yamaguchi, and HINATA IN HIS FANCY TOKYO clothes, haha.
> 
>  
> 
> [Check it out!](http://gayhaikyuuties.tumblr.com/post/153773523112/you-know-you-fell-to-deep-into-a-fandom-when-you)

 

_Don’t worry Shouyou,_ Kenma's text said. _It’s impossible to get lost._

 

Shouyou was lost.

He was supposed to take the bullet train to Tokyo station, then the JR Chuo service to Shunjuku station, then jump the Odakyu Odawara Express to Shimo-Kitazawa, where Kenma would be waiting to pick him up. Really simple, he said. So simple Kageyama could do it, Shouyou joked back. Yes, Kenma said. _That_ simple.

And last night, on the other end of the phone, lying in his Miyagi bedroom, it really seemed that way.

Once those train doors opened, though, and the people and the sounds and the lights and the signs and the _even more people_ rushed at him…

“Kenma,” he said into the phone, doing an impression of the stray kittens behind Ukai’s shop. “Help.”

“It’s fine, Shouyou,” Kenma said. “We’re almost at Tokyo station now. Where exactly are you?”

“I...have no idea. Inside?”

“Look around,” Kenma said. “What can you see?”

Shouyou looked left, then looked right, and answered honestly.

“Butts,” he said. “Just tons of butts. Why is everyone here so tall?”

Kenma _had_ warned him even the quietest times at Tokyo station were super busy at this time of year. Thousands of people were streaming into town for new year parties, and even more were streaming out to avoid the crowds coming in. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered hearing this was one of the busiest train stations in the world—at school? On TV? Somewhere—but only now did he understand what that really meant.

You couldn’t move without banging into someone.

_Right_ into their butt.

“Look past the butts, Shouyou,” Kenma said. Patient and kind and calm and nice. In the background, he could hear someone losing their sides with laughter. That would be Kuroo, driving the car. “Try and find a sign that says ‘taxis’.”

Shouyou nudged his way through the sea of butts and found a clear line to a white wall. Signs were plastered all over it—timetables, flashing warnings, advertisements, track updates, local information, tourist centers, car hire…

“Ah!” he said, finally spotting it. “There! Taxis this way.”

“Good,” Kenma said. “Go in that direction. We’re close now.”

“I’m sorry,” Shouyou said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“No, really,” Shouyou said. Insistent. Shaking his head. “I just couldn’t find my way to the JR Chuo—”

“It’s hard to find in the rush.”

“But you had to drive all the way here—”

“Shouyou, it’s fifteen extra minutes. Nothing. We should have just met you here in the first place.” Kenma said. “Right, Kuroo?”

Kuroo’s voice was tinny in the background.

“What’s the point of having a driver’s license if you don’t use it, Shrimpy?”

“I’m sorry, Captain!” Shouyou said.

Kuroo wasn’t his captain—he was Kenma’s. But Shouyou felt like he ought to be formal. Like the least he could do was be _polite_. He’d already made them drive from Shimo-Kitazawa to Tokyo, and he’d call Kuroo his Captain, his Prince, his _King_ if it meant he’d come rescue him in his car.

Kuroo laughed harder.

“Just keep walking,” Kenma said. “The exit can’t be far.”

“I’m on some steps right now.”

“That’s good,” Kenma said. “We’re almost there. But Shouyou, this is important: when you see us pull up, bolt for the car and dive in. Or the taxis will chase us away. Tokyo cab drivers are scary, so we have to make this quick.”

Shouyou felt himself puff up.

_Bolt_.

If there was one thing he could do—one thing he was confident he could do better than anyone in Tokyo station—it was _bolt_. He’d built his entire volleyball career on it. All nine months of it!

If Kenma needed him to, he’d bolt all the way to Shimo-Kitazawa.

Wherever _that_ was.

“You bet!” he said.

The stairs finally opened up on to flat ground and he emerged, gasping and frazzled, into Tokyo. He'd only been here a few times before, and still wasn't used to the size of it. _Everything_ was big. The buildings were big, the crowds were big, the roads were big, the lights were big, even the _sounds_ were big. Sunlight touched him for the first time in what felt like days, and icy-cold fresh air rushed into his lungs and made him feel _alive_.

He’d forgotten what it was like to be in a world where butts kept their distance.

His eyes darted for the road.

A line of taxis was pulled up against the concrete gutter. Dozens of passengers pushed forward—all orderly on the surface but playing a deadly game of subtle line-cutting. No sooner would one taxi arrive than it would fill with bodies and luggage, then take off, only to be replaced by another one. Like a big, long tentacle that regrew itself every time a bit dropped off.

Shouyou kept his legs tense.

Latched and spring loaded, waiting for him to pull the trigger.

He watched, and waited.

“Shouyou,” Kenma said in his ear.

Shouyou saw a dark red, four-door Toyota pull into one of the places reserved for taxis. The two side windows slid down, and inside he saw the unmistakable signs of Kenma. Two-tone hair. Bright red jacket. Big, yellow eyes. Shiny black smartphone.

Shouyou grinned.

“Run,” Kenma said.

He triggered the springs in his legs and dashed forward.

His luggage trailed behind him, dead weight in his right hand, trying to over-balance him. Shouyou ignored it, forcing his elbow to lock and gritting his teeth against the strain. This was _him_. This is what he understood. The wind slapping against his face, blowing through his hair, blood surging through him and air stinging his throat.

Up ahead, the first of the taxi horns sounded.

Shouyou could see Kenma speaking into his phone, but it was no good. He needed his phone hand to keep balance. Instead, he grinned at Kenma, and pushed on harder.

More taxis joined in, and a couple of station attendants began moving toward the car. Shouyou was ten steps away, and they were only five. But they were slow. And old.

Shouyou could beat them.

_Kenma_ knew he could beat them.

Kenma was a setter, and setters understood best how fast he could run.

Two steps from the car, Shouyou threw his bag through the open window. It crashed into the back seat. He could just make out Kuroo in the driver’s seat, face twisted with cackling laughter.

The station attendants recoiled from the flying bag.

Shouyou ripped open the back door and flung himself inside.

“Go!” he yelled.

“Go,” Kenma echoed.

Shouyou felt himself pinned to the seat as Kuroo sped away from the kerb. He gripped the edge of the seat as they cleared the taxi stand, then the station driveway, and then made it to the street.

“Nice work, Shrimpy,” Kuroo said.

Shouyou pushed himself upright and buckled his seat belt.

When he looked up, Kenma was twisted around in his seat. Big cat’s eyes fixed on him, mouth slanted into a cheeky smile that Shouyou couldn’t help but copy.

“Welcome to Tokyo.”

 

***

 

Twenty minutes later, Kuroo dropped them off at Kenma's front door. He didn't hang around— _just a taxi driver today, Shrimpy—_ but promised he'd see them both at the Nekoma team practice the next day. Shouyou felt like his head hadn't stopped spinning since he got off the train, and he used the short walk to Kenma's front door to take a few breaths.

Deep breath in. He'd finally made it to Tokyo.

Back out again. Tokyo, to Kenma's house.

Deep breath in. Kenma's...actually really quite big house.

Back out again. Into Kenma's room.

Breath...in...

Nope. It was caught in his throat.

“ _This_ is your room??” Shouyou said.

It couldn't be.

He was standing in the middle of a...warehouse or something. A high-ceilinged, floor-stretching, crammed-full-of-amazing-stuff warehouse. It was easily three times the size of Shouyou's own bedroom and it was stacked, floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, with bookshelves. _Some_ of the bookshelves had books on them. Others had figurines, models, games, puzzles, toys, plushies...

“Yeah,” Kenma said. “Sorry it's a bit messy.”

He was watching Shouyou with one eye. Sort of looking-but-not-looking.

“Ah—,” Shouyou said, but the word caught.

The room was _so_ huge he still wasn't done taking it in. There was an enormous bed pushed against the far wall—made, but messy, exactly the way Shouyou did it when his mom wasn't home. Eight or nine books were scattered across it, as well as Kenma's DS and the controller for a games console. Which meant...

There! Angled to face the bed was a black cabinet, and sitting on top of it was a _massive_ TV. So thin Shouyou missed it on his first scan. Discs were piled up around the base of it. Some of them were movies, some were TV shows, some were games. On the wall opposite his bed was a computer—two cables ran from the box to the back of the TV cabinet—and next to _that_ was an old-looking electric piano.

There was a curtained door to a tiled room in the far wall. His own bathroom.

“Amazing!” Shouyou full-on shouted.

Kenma rushed to the bedside table to pick up two empty glasses and a plate. He knocked an empty soda can into a small bin while he was at it, and nudged a few of the DVD cases underneath the bed, out of sight.

“I sort of _did_ clean up,” he said. “I'm just not good at it.”

Shouyou put his bag on the floor and wandered toward him.

“Forget that!” he said. “Show me!”

Kenma's eyebrows twitched up.

“Show you what?”

“ _Everything_ ,” Shouyou said, waving his hand around the room. He felt like he could stop _literally anywhere_ and he'd be pointing at something interesting and cool. “This place is like...like a museum!”

Kenma laughed.

“And you'd like the tour?”

“Yes! Exactly! Be my tour guide.”

Kenma's laughs were getting more full and bit more hearty. His smile was getting just a little bit less guarded, too. He put the empty glasses and plate down on the bedside table, and waved Shouyou over to the closest set of shelves.

Shouyou had to stop himself from _leaping_ there.

So far, Kenma had been in warm up mode. Shouyou had known him a long time, and knew that it took him a while to get used to the idea of company and conversations. He always got there, though. He was like a faucet that got stronger the longer you left it running.

This was it. He could see it in Kenma's eyes.

The flow was about to begin.

“All right,” he said. “But remember, you're the one who said 'everything'.”

And Kenma started.

This first case was filled with robot figurines. Kenma had names for all of them, and the shows and movies they came from, and their backstories. Shouyou learned all about _Karabast_ , the 'bipedal sentient war machine with a heart of gold', and then insisted Kenma explain what the hell that meant. He learned about _Richter_ , the piloted mechanical suit with a state-of-the-art gauss cannon. Then he learned what a gauss cannon was.

Then the next book case. Magazines and serials and books. Kenma told him all about his favorites—showed him the ones those mechs were from—and moved on to the others. Science Fiction. Fantasy. Cyberpunk. Thrillers. Even Romance.

Shouyou didn't let him skip _any_ of it.

Next one. A case full of fluffy, stuffed animals from an old card trading game when Kenma was a kid. Shouyou hadn't even _heard_ of it before, so it must have been a Tokyo-only thing. Even so, by the end of it, he knew the rules, how to play, and what each creature could do.

Next. A book case full of spaceships. Arranged by universe, class, size. Goodies on the left, baddies on the right. Shouyou's feet were starting to hurt and he didn't care.

Next. More books. Non-fiction and school stuff.

Next. Puzzles and games.

Next. Old movies, TV box sets, games for the consoles he didn't own any more but couldn't bear to throw away.

Then Kenma showed him the computer, and the two-screen setup he had there. He explained the way he could go looking for _any_ kind of movie or show online, download it, and the two cables in the tower could run it directly to the TV near his bed. He could even use a wireless keyboard and mouse from across the room so he didn't need to get up.

Then the electric piano, which was his mother's. He didn't know how to play it, but he liked it being there. His mom had recorded five hundred—or maybe even more—tracks to the memory bank, and Kenma liked to listen to them once in a while.

Then the TV cabinet.

Filled with games. Filled with TV shows.

“What are you playing right now?” Shouyou said.

“I'm kind of half way between three at the mom— _hem_.”

Kenma thumped the heel of his palm into his chest and cleared his throat. He grimaced as a phlegm-y sound echoed from his throat, and sat down on the edge of his bed.

“Are you okay?” Shouyou said.

“Yeah,” Kenma said. “Yeah, it's just...I've been talking too much.”

Shouyou sat down next to him and grinned.

“An unusual feeling?”

Kenma snorted.

“Yeah,” he said.

And although they were joking together, and his voice was scratchy and light, and there was a smile on his lips...Shouyou saw the way Kenma's eyes widened just a little bit. Like this was an actual surprise to him.

Shouyou wondered how often Kenma felt this way. Probably not often. Throat all dried out and sore from talking, exhausted without even having done any exercise. Shouyou could _see_ it in the way Kenma's eyes were tight and droopy—way droopier than normal.

Shouyou had worn him out.

He felt like he was about to burst with...pride? Something, anyway.

“What's that look for?” Kenma said in a scratchy, thin voice.

Shouyou's grinned was so tight it pulled his eyes closed.

“I'm just wondering how many people make you talk until you can't any more,” he said. “Not many, I bet! Right?”

There was a split second when Shouyou thought he'd said the wrong thing, because Kenma stared. His whole body was frozen, like he was just another figurine in this exhibition hall of a bedroom.

But then he laughed—the biggest and loudest laugh yet—and shook his head.

“Literally nobody.”

Shouyou laughed as well as all that built up pride punched through. It must be how Kageyama felt on the volleyball court when they did their freak quick. A real sparkly feeling of knowing you were the _only_ one in the world who could make it happen.

“How about some water, then?” Shouyou said.

“Yeah,” Kenma said. He shook his head a couple of times. “I'll show you the Kitchen, too. We've been in here for...”

He trailed off to check his phone.

And this time, his eyes _did_ go wide with shock.

“Whoa, four hours?”

“Really?” Shouyou said.

He checked his own phone.

Nearly five PM, so more like four and a half hours.

“Wow,” he said. “It feels like I just got here.”

“I know,” Kenma said. “I've taken up the whole day. I'm sorry, I was going to ask what you wanted to—”

“I wanted to do _this_ ,” Shouyou said.

And Kenma smiled again.

“Tomorrow will be different,” he said. “The team's getting together at eight. I'll toss to you as many times as you like, no matter how tired I get. I promise.”

“Whatever you normally do is fine!” Shouyou said. He suddenly felt it was really important Kenma understood why he was here. It wasn't to be slimy, and use him up as a setter, and put up with the rest as long as he could get his court time in. “I didn't _only_ come here for volleyball. You're not just, like...a set of arms to keep a ball in the air.”

Kenma laughed, and folded his arms together tight so Shouyou couldn't see them.

“My eyes are up here, Shouyou,” he said.

Shouyou didn't get it.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Kenma said. “Come on, Kitchen's this way. We should think about ordering food, too. You must be starving.”

He wasn't. He never got hungry when his blood was pumping like this. It only usually happened while he was playing volleyball, or just before he was _going_ to play volleyball, or when he was arguing with Kageyama about volleyball. But every so often, something would get him excited, or over-stimulated, and he'd get that same feeling pounding through him. Kenma's house was the _most_ over-stimulation. It was extra-over-stimulation.

But normal people liked to eat.

“Sure,” Shouyou said, following him out.

He stepped over his travel bag, and it jogged his memory.

He'd have to remember to give Kenma BLUSH!! at some point.

The kitchen was a bit smaller than Kenma's room, but much more tidy. It looked like it hadn't been touched in a long time. Except for a small pile of used plates and cups stacked near the dishwasher, it was completely packed away.

Kenma grabbed one of the used cups for himself and dived into the dishwasher for a clean one.

“Drink?” he said, voice still husky and dry. “Cold water, milk, juice? I think there's lemonade that isn't too flat?”

“Water for me,” Shouyou said.

As Kenma filled the cups, Shouyou cocked one ear in the air. The entire house was silent except the gurgling sound of the water being poured. All the lights were out, too. The cushions on the couches and chairs in the living room were fluffed and untouched, as though nobody had ever sat on them before.

“Thanks,” Shouyou said as Kenma handed him his water. “So I should have asked this way before now, but I guess your parents aren't home? Or are they just _really_ quiet?”

He said it as a joke, but if they were related to Kenma...

Kenma shook his head.

“Nah, they aren't here.”

“Didn't think so,” Shouyou said. “Are they out, or...?”

“Well, yeah, sort of,” Kenma said. “They're out in Korea.”

“They’re...huh?” Shouyou said. His heart did a little skip for some reason. “Korea?”

“Yeah,” Kenma said. “Seoul.”

He didn’t say another word about it as he walked back through the kitchen, and Shouyou didn't push it. Not that there was anything weird about how Kenma said it. He said it exactly like he said everything. Kind of deadpan and matter-of-fact, like _these are the facts of the situation_ sort of thing.

But something about it seemed...weird to him. He couldn't put his finger on what, but _something_. Was this one of those things people did when they didn't want to talk about something? Was it one of those things where they _pretended_ like they didn't want to talk about it but secretly _did_? That didn't seem like Kenma.

And why the hell wouldn't his heart stop battering his ribs?

Shouyou shook his head. He wasn't good at this kind of thing. He wasn't like Yamaguchi, who could read people's feelings and coax them out like they were a scared puppy under a bed. He wasn't like Kageyama, who could sense bad thoughts and knew how to stamp on them. He was Shouyou. All he knew how to do was run fast and jump high.

So he left it to hang. Along with all the unanswered questions he was dying to know. Why they were there, when they’d be back, how long they’d been gone, did they often leave him by himself…

Or rather, not by himself.

Not for the next three days, anyway.

“Seoul,” Shouyou said. Quietly, to himself.

Across the room, Kenma fished a menu from a cabinet drawer.

“Pizza sound good?” he said.

“Yeah!” Shouyou said, grin bursting back onto his lips.

_Seoul_.

“Sounds perfect,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is SO late, and it's for a couple of reasons. One, I had a super busy holiday period! Man, like...WAY busier than usual, hah. ALSO I got obsessed with Yuri on Ice for a while there and it was like I couldn't write or think about anything else until it stopped airing. I'm sure many of you know what I'm talking about there!!
> 
> It's also because this chapter, and the one coming up, were *super hard to write*. At one stage this chapter was 7+ thousand words, but it wasn't working. I pared some stuff back, and wound up splitting it into two, so the good news is that the next chapter is mostly written. I just need to make it work as its own chapter now. I'm super sorry for the delays! The next chapter should only take a jiffy.
> 
> And I don't know if this will interest you or not but it is *tentatively* titled 'Casually Shirtless'.
> 
> Thank you ALL for your patience!


	5. Casually Shirtless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And on we go! But first, guys, LOOK! More fan art!
> 
> So this is for OUT, not BLUSH, but since the characters cross over and a lot of people have read both, I thought you'd like to see. By the wonderful Pegacorn:
> 
>  
> 
> [Taiga and Yamaguchi](http://orig08.deviantart.net/7e09/f/2016/365/4/c/taigayams_by_thisisawkwardsauce-datl2ym.png)
> 
> ALSO: I made some lightning edits to chapter 3 to establish that Hinata is the type to be shirtless around his house. It's like...2 lines, but if it seems a bit out of place here it's because I forgot to establish it earlier!
> 
> Folks might also start to get their first hints to why this story has an M rating, too, and I'm not ruling out bumping it to an E later on. But for now, enjoy! I'll always let you know if we're about to get into full-on NSFW material, haha.

Two medium pizzas. Twelve slices total.

_All_ gone.

“Kenm—” Shouyou started, but his voice was hijacked by a burp that tasted like meat and oil and dough. He slapped a hand on his belly and shook his head. “Kenma, I'm going to burst.”

They were sprawled out on a floor mattress in front of the television, the two empty boxes flopped open between them. All that was left was the smell of garlic, and streaks of cheese and toppings that hadn't made it out with their slice. Dead boxes with their stringy, cheesy guts splattered all over the place.

Kenma was propped up against the side of his bed, eyes closed, hands resting on his stomach.

“Try not to,” he said. “It sounds so messy.”

The December cold crept into the room sometime before dinner, so Kenma had turned on a little box heater near the TV cabinet. It was the only sound Shouyou could hear for the moment, whirring away, pumping heat at him. Between the hot air and the pizza, he felt a trickle of sweat gather at the back of his neck.

He hadn't eaten this much in ages. 

Something about Kenma's place had ruined his impulse control.

“I bet you can see it in there,” Shouyou said, and he slid his shirt up to check. His stomach _was_ bulging more than usual—which still wasn't much, but he could tell the difference. He patted the food-bubble and lulled his head to the side.

Kenma was watching with heavy-lidded eyes.

“My pizza baby,” Shouyou said, grinning.

Kenma laughed, watching Shouyou rub his tummy for a few seconds, and then let his head fall back against the bed again. Shouyou waited to see if they'd stay closed and, when they did, he tugged his shirt back down. He blew out a long breath and mimicked Kenma's pose. Neck sagged against the edge of the mattress. Flat-out and limp like a puppet with nobody at the strings.

“You'll make a great dad,” Kenma said. “What will you call it?”

“I'll name it after the pizza place.”

Kenma snorted.

“Shimo-Kitazawa Stone Bake.”

“Ah,” Shouyou said. “Little Stonebakey. You _will_ be bullied.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and only had two senses. The taste of the pizza on his tongue and the feel of hot, blowing air on his skin. It was amazing. More relaxing than anything he'd felt in a long time. Like being in a steam bath where they served dinner on soft seats.

If his eyes stayed closed much longer...

“Aghhh I need to wake up,” Shouyou said. He brushed his hands on his shorts—still a bit slippery with pizza grease—and tucked his knees up against his chest. “Do you mind if I have a shower before we get things started?”

“Oh, sure,” Kenma said. “There's the main bathroom, or the one right there.”

He pointed with his chin at the tiled room. A white curtain ran ceiling-to- _almost_ -floor, and Shouyou leaned down to peek under it. It was pretty small, but all he needed was a shower and somewhere to change.

“So whichever one you'd prefer,” Kenma said. “There's spare towels in both.”

“Here's fine!” Shouyou said, and he sprang to his feet. The pizza in his guts sloshed about and re-settled, and suddenly he felt a bit better. A big stretch—legs, back, arms and neck—and he felt better still. “I won't be long.”

“Cool,” Kenma said. “I'll get things set up out here.”

Shouyou had the weird feeling he was forgetting something as he strode behind the curtain. He found the spare towels just fine, though, and double-checked there was no trick to the shower as he started it running. It all seemed fine. There was plenty of soap—Kenma used sensitive skin body wash—and shampoo, too. So he shrugged it off as nothing.

The bathroom temperature was half that of Kenma's bedroom, so he let the water run nice and warm. He tossed his clothes in the corner, stepped into the stream, and scrubbed himself quickly. He'd only washed it yesterday, but reflex saw him dousing his hair and reaching for the shampoo again.

He took a deep sniff of it.

Minty? Sort of...refreshing?

Once the suds were out of his eyes, he checked the label.

“Eucalyptus and spearmint,” he murmured. 

Now that he had a name for it, he could swear he remembered this smell from the car earlier. Only faintly, but it had definitely been there. He'd probably caught the scent when he'd been leaning forward, toward the top of the passenger seat.

He laughed to himself.

He'd never spent so much time thinking about what people's hair smells like since he'd read  _BLUSH!!_

And speaking of  _BLUSH!!_ , he'd have to remember to give that to Kenma soon.

Later, when they were done gaming.

He finished up and dried himself—a quick pull of the towel through his hair to stop it dripping, but not bothering to try and dry it completely. He swept it to the side and carried on. Arms, torso, legs, feet...done.

Between the cascading shower and the thrill of cold bathroom air on his skin, he felt new. Fully awake. Ready to power through some videogames and show Kenma that country boys could do it just as well as city ones.

Now, to get...

Dressed?

_Ahhhh, crap_ .

He laughed and rolled his eyes. The feeling of forgetfulness from earlier surged back in to him as he suddenly realized what was missing. His bag, filled with all his clothes, was still sitting outside. All the way across Kenma's room, where he'd dropped it hours ago.

“Duh, Shouyou,” he said.

He looked at the pile of discarded clothes—he'd only been wearing them since this morning and hadn't dirtied them at all—but shook his head. He didn't want  _those_ clothes. He wanted his pajama shorts.

So he wrapped the towel around his waist, tucked it in, and gave it a test tug to make sure it wasn't going to fall. He had no hips to speak of, and so his butt was the only thing that stuck out far enough to stop it dropping away. He pushed the towel low on his hips to make sure it was sitting tight and secure. Then a bit lower to be sure. It was further down than he'd wear shorts, but shorts had elastic and buttons. Roots of reddish-brown hair peeked from the lip of the towel just below his navel, but it was either this or risk losing it. He didn't want to embarrass Kenma, after all!

This was the best way.

He rolled his neck and stepped through the curtain.

It was so nice and warm in the bedroom.

“All—” Kenma started, but stuttered when he looked up.

Shouyou strode across the room—careful steps so the towel stayed firm—and pointed toward his bag. He used his other hand to ruffle his hair. Mainly so he had something to do with it.

“...done?” Kenma finished off.

He suddenly looked like he was trying to look in every direction at once. One eye on Shouyou as he walked, one eye on where he was pointing, one eye firmly fixed on the TV screen, one eye staring intently at the ceiling, one eye wandering to the floor. He'd need to be a twenty-eyed monster to look all the places he was trying to look. He was suddenly shy again, like they were back in time on the first day they'd met.

“I forgot my bag,” Shouyou said, the hand in his hair pausing at the back of his head so he could underscore his sheepishness. “Thought I was at home for a minute there.”

“Oh, it's fine,” Kenma said. He'd settled on eyes-forward to the television screen. “It's how I do it. It's the whole point of a bed-and-bath combo, right?”

Shouyou laughed, and bent at the knees to get to his bag. He pulled open the zips and reached inside—his pajama shorts were right on the top, as well as a fresh set of underwear. He plucked them out and twirled them on his finger.

“That's better,” he said. “Have you picked our first game?”

“Sure have,” Kenma said. Eyes still locked on the TV screen.

Shouyou ducked behind the curtain again and let the towel drop, scrambling into his underwear as quickly as he could. The towel must've been rubbing against him all wrong, because he had to adjust himself into the fabric to hide the beginnings of a hard-on. No big deal. These undies were tight, and besides it was only just starting on its way up. It'd be gone in no time.

“What game?” he called out.

“Big Bash Brawl,” Kenma called back. Shouyou un-bunched his shorts and slid in to them, too. With one final glance in the mirror—bare torso and side-swept hair and a tiny strip of black elastic showing at his waist—he turned.

“Is that the one with the—” Shouyou started on one side of the curtain. He pulled it across and stepped out into the bedroom, and Kenma's eyes flicked his way. “—characters from all different games who fight each other?”

Kenma's face pinched into a little smile.

“That's the one,” he said. “It's a button masher.”

Shouyou slid down into the same spot he'd been in earlier. Kenma had cleared away the pizza boxes and had a controller ready to go. Shouyou scooped it up and grinned.

“Button masher,” he said. “Something even I'd be good at.”

Kenma's eyes flicked his way again.  _Split_ second looks, then straight back at the TV

“ _Nobody_ can spot who's got talent for BBB,” he said. “It's like singing. You can't tell if someone's a good singer just by looking at them. And sometimes people who've never sung before are amazing at it. It's this weird x-factor.”

“And do you have it?” Shouyou asked.

Kenma's smile turned dark.

“You'll see.”

Shouyou had seen that look on Kenma's face before. Right as he was about to show off on the volleyball court. Show off in his own quiet, understated kind of way, but this was the smile he only ever flashed when he was about to win.

Shouyou carefully selected his character—Tikachu, because why not—and Kenma quickly ran him through the controls.

“X to jump. Square to bash. Circle to kick. Triangle for special ability...”

And on he went. Shouyou stared down at the controller and waited for Kenma to finish.

“Right,” he said. “So I just mash all these buttons and beat you, right?”

Kenma laughed.

“Like I said. You'll see.”

The music kicked up a gear as the screen faded in to the arena. Shouyou leaned forward, controller firm in his hands. Countdown. Three...two...one...

“Hyaa!” Shouyou yelled, pounding on the buttons and pushing Tikachu in Kenma's rough direction. Kenma was playing as Titanis, an all-metal dinosaur that was sitting on one of the shelves in this very room. The way it dwarfed Shouyou's little fluffy creature was super unfair.

“Ah,” Kenma said. “A jumper. I know how to deal with jumpers.”

Titanis slammed Tikachu to the ground and whipped its tail around, slamming into him over and over.

“Gah! Get off!” Shouyou said. He mashed buttons until Tikachu finally dragged himself off upright—half his health gone!--and fled for the other side of the map. He had no idea what Tikachu's special ability was, but he needed _something_. He slammed the triangle button, hard and fast and often.

Tikachu puffed up. The camera zoomed in. Red fire started to swirl around the little guy, and then all at once...BAM! It transformed into a huge, fierce, fire-breathing dragon.

“Whoa,” Kenma said. “You got there quick.”

“So I could do _this_ ,” Shouyou said, and he scored his first good hit. Fire engulfed the metal dinosaur and his health burned down to half. Kenma laughed as Shouyou wailed in victory.

“Okay,” Kenma said. “You asked for it.”

“Bring it!” Shouyou said.

But wished he hadn't.

Kenma finished the fight in seconds flat after that. He pinned Tikachu again, wore the health bar down as efficiently and easily as if he was navigating a menu screen, and before Shouyou could say another word the fight was over.

“Gah!” he said, collapsing back. The controller fell on his belly, still shaking from his on-screen death, and he let it tickle him. “Tikachu isn't my character.”

“Yeah,” Kenma said. “That _must_ be it.”

He looked Shouyou's way. Very quickly again, less then a second, before he flicked his eyes away. Then back again. Then away. Then finally back for good this time, and he held his head steady. 

“Um...do you want me to turn the heater off, or...?”

“Hm?” Shouyou said.

Kenma kept his eyes locked on Shouyou's face, but nodded his head downward. Shouyou looked down, at his bare chest and belly and back, and finally figured it out.

“Oh!” he said. “No, no, I'm not hot. Sorry, this is just what I usually wear around the house. Is...do you want me to...”

“No, no,” Kenma said, shaking his head. Firmly. Like Shouyou'd just offered to go back to Miyagi if he'd prefer. “It's fine, I just wanted to make sure you're comfortable.”

“I am if you are,” Shouyou said.

And that dark little smile came back to Kenma's lips.

“Yep,” he said. “Round two. Let's go.”

They spent hours playing BBB—Shouyou managed to win two whole bouts—before moving on to the other games in Kenma's huge catalogue. They tried racing games, a deathmatch shooter about two countries at war, a co-op platformer about a pair of lost creatures in a forest, and settled finally on a single player dungeon crawler. Shouyou had spent ages in the character designer— _I'm going to make it look exactly like you, Kenma!—_ and eventually came up with a woodland elf that looked just right.

He was an archer character, so Shouyou named him _Kozume_ _Kenmarksman._

From there, it took Shouyou less than half an hour to stumble into dire trouble.

“How am I losing a fight with a _tree_?” Shouyou said, mashing the controller.

Beside him, back pressed up against the edge of his bed and losing his _mind_ with laughter, Kenma was trying to help out.

“Sho— _Shouyou_ ,” the words wheezed out like someone squeezing air from a bike tire. “You have to—to press— _look out—”_

“ _Wahhhh!”_ Shouyou shouted.

The angry living tree yanked his character from the ground and shook him in mid air. Shouyou leaped on to his knees, pounded buttons, shook the controller as hard as he could.

“Put me down, you bark-faced asshole!” he yelled.

Kenma sounded like he was deflating little by little. His laugh was way more high-pitched than his voice, though it might also be because his voice was worn down. His words were interrupted by little breathy squeaks.

“Sho—Shouyou quick—press—”

“Take THIS!”

And Shouyou made his final, desperate play.

He pushed the only button he hadn't tried yet. The one with the big logo on it.

The screen went blue, and the sounds of battle cut out. The television was back to the home screen—the icon for the game they were playing throbbing dead-centre. Shouyou scrunched up his nose.

“What?”

Kenma—through deep gasps and teary eyes—could only manage two words.

“Rage quit!” he said, hugging his knees and shaking. Once he'd finally wrung all the tears from his eyes and gotten his breathing under control, he rested his head on his knees and looked at Shouyou. “You hit the home button. It quits the game.”

“Oh!” Shouyou said. “So I technically won.”

“Um... _technically_?”

“Technically I'm still here,” he said, dropping the controller and sinking his butt back in to the mattress. “And it isn't. So I win.”

“Oh, for sure,” Kenma said.

“I can do whatever I want and it can't stop me.”

“Exactly.”

“I can call it a bark-faced asshole over and over and it's just gotta take it.”

Kenma heaved, the mattress behind him shaking with his shoulders.

“Video games make you swear, Shouyou,” he said. “It's the first time I've ever heard you do it.”

“Oh? Should I stop?”

Kenma shook his head.

“Fuck, no.”

Now he thought about it, it was Shouyou's first time hearing Kenma swear, too. And for some reason it was  _really_ funny. Maybe because of the heat, or maybe because Kenma had spent a solid half hour giggling beside him, but Shouyou couldn't help it. He dissolved into the same shaking huffs that had overtaken Kenma, and let the controller drop to the mattress.

“O-fucking-kay,” he said back, breathy and through puffs of laughter.

Using those words...it felt like crossing a line. One they hadn't been across before, and one Shouyou hadn't crossed with almost anyone. Kageyama swore at  _him_ all the time, but he still hadn't found the comfort to do it back. It was like something had spilled between him and Kenma just now, and there was no way to put it back in the bottle. Like they were characters in the dungeon crawler and had leveled up, unlocking new language as they went.

It wasn't something he wanted to do  _much_ . But it was nice to know he could if he wanted, and Kenma wouldn't mind.

“Speaking of swearing, though,” Kenma said, checking his phone. “Holy shit, it's one in the morning.”

“It can’t be. We’ve only been playing for ten minutes.”

Kenma whipped his phone around so Shouyou could see for himself. The lock screen wallpaper was a picture of half the Nekoma volleyball team wearing plastic cat ears—it made Shouyou happy that even Kenma, half-hearted as he was about sport, cared enough to have it on his phone like this—and the time loomed over them in big, white digits.

1:06 am.

“Wow,” Shouyou said. “What time do we have to be at training in the morning?”

“Eight,” Kenma said. 

“I usually get up just before six for a run, is that okay?”

Kenma laughed.

“As long as you don’t mind running alone.”

Shouyou laughed back.

He knew Kenma would say that.

 

***

 

They were both competing for who could yawn loudest and longest.

The lights were out, the heater was off, the TV was quiet, and the only sound that filled the room was the air rushing from their throats. Like they were a pair of lions who could only roar in whispers. Huffy, tired lions who'd lost their voices.

Shouyou’s eyes were closed, but his head was still racing around inside his skull. Probably the videogames. And the excitement of being here. And the unfamiliar feel of the spongy mattress underneath him. 

It was where they’d left it from gaming. Hard up against the side of Kenma’s bed. He could feel the spot that Kenma had been sitting in all night, and the groove he’d left it in on his side, too. The edge of Kenma’s bed was soft—like a padded wall covered in blankets—and Shouyou was tucked in tight against it.

He opened his eyes.

Above him, he could see the edge of Kenma’s blankets overhanging the edge of his bed.

Shouyou blinked at them. He was tired—the kind of bleary-tired he usually only got after a long volleyball match. But something was stopping him from sleeping. He'd left something unfinished.

Or not unfinished...un _said_ .

“Hey Kenma?” he said.

Kenma's blanket didn't move.

“Mm?”

“Why are your mom and dad in Korea?”

The words were out of his mouth before he knew why he’d said them.

All he knew was this was the one thing from tonight that didn't feel right. It was an odd feeling. Like he'd forgotten to do his homework.

Kenma cleared his throat.

“They're visiting family,” he said, voice droopy. “My uncle and aunt live there. And about six of my cousins.”

“Are they younger than you?”

“Some,” Kenma said. “Two are my age.”

“Oh,” Shouyou said. He stared up at the ceiling. For the first time, he noticed there were stickers on it. He couldn't make out what they were in the dark. “Did your parents not want to interrupt your training for nationals or something?”

“Hm?”

“Since you didn't go, too?”

“Oh,” Kenma said. “No, that's not it. I could have gone. I didn't want to.”

Shouyou didn’t say anything.

A yawn filled him up, and he felt his eyes pull tight as he let it escape his throat.

There was something about the way Kenma was in the kitchen before. Something about the way he was talking now. It was...short. Like Kenma, but halved. He wasn’t sure how to describe it other than that. The faucet that had spent all night flowing was tightened up around this.

“Cool,” Shouyou said.

He let it go. Would have been perfectly happy to leave the whole thing there.

But it was like he’d pushed something that was teetering on an edge, and now it was very, very slowly toppling forward. Kenma’s breathing got a little bit quicker and deeper, and Shouyou craned his neck to watch the edge of the bed.

“I get...anxious,” Kenma said. “If I've got to be with a group of people, or if I’m going to be the center of attention. I'm okay once I get there. Like I'm all right here, now. But before that, in the build up...it's like...scary.”

Shouyou let his head dip to the side.

He stared at the padded wall of Kenma’s mattress.

“Huh,” Shouyou said. “Is it...like how I feel before a game, sort of thing? I get really nervous and my blood starts pumping. And Tanaka will tell you all about how I like to throw up in the _worst_ places.”

Kenma snorted.

Shifted above Shouyou.

“Nah, not like that,” he said. “It's not like nerves. It's like...fear. I'm pretty good at keeping it under control these days I guess, so not many people know about it. I used to get these panic attacks, though. Just the idea of talking to people...it's weird.”

Shouyou let a few seconds slip by.

“It doesn’t sound weird to me.”

Whether that was the right thing to say, he had no idea.

Kenma shifted again.

“And the worst part is it doesn't matter how well I know someone, either. I still get like this before I go to school and see Kuroo and the rest of the team. Even before you got here today. Even family.”

Shouyou could hear it in Kenma’s voice.

He didn’t like talking about this. He sounded like Kageyama talking about math, or Tsukishima talking about reality TV, or Shimizu talking about that guy in second year who wouldn’t stop sending her love confessions. Annoyed by it. Like he was grudgingly admitting to the whole thing.

Also, he was probably super tired.

Shouyou didn’t want to push. Didn’t want to make Kenma feel any worse.

“And that's why you didn't go to Korea,” he said.

There. Now, it was on Kenma. End the talk, or go deeper.

“Yeah,” Kenma said. “And also, I mean...you were coming.”

That warm feeling from earlier spread all the way through Shouyou once again. It felt special—like he had something nobody in the world had. Something they didn’t even know about. It was just a thing he and Kenma shared.

Nobody else could make Kenma feel like this.

Just him.

He smiled in the dark.

“Hey Shouyou,” Kenma said.

“Hm?” Shouyou said into the dark.

“Thanks for doing my kind of thing today,” he said. “Tomorrow will be different. I'll give you as many tosses as you like.”

Shouyou started to answer, but was overtaken by a big, stretched-out yawn. 

“Today was the _best_ day,” he said. “Tomorrow will be, too.”

“Two best days,” Kenma said.

“Yep,” Shouyou said. 

It was Kenma's turn to yawn, and the silence stretched to seconds, then minutes, and it finally felt like they'd talked each other out. Shouyou's head started doing the floaty thing it did before he was about to fall asleep. Random thoughts swirled together, crashing in to one another, competing to be the thing he dreamed about. The train. The pizza. A dozen different mechs on Kenma's shelves. Kuroo's bad driving.  _BLUSH!!_

Oh yeah.  _BLUSH!!_

He'd give it to Kenma tomorrow.

The formula for love stepped forward from the big bash brawl of thoughts in his head, and he felt a tiny pump of blood as he went down the list.

 

_1 – ALONE TIME!_

 

Kenma's parents, both in Seoul.

 

_2 – SHARE INTERESTS!_

 

A room full of Kenma's favorite things.

 

_3 – BE COMFORTABLE!_

 

Hanging out, casually shirtless, swearing together...

He laughed. A hissing little snort that rippled through his mattress and blanket.

“What's funny?” Kenma asked in a faded voice.

“Nothing,” Shouyou said.

He rolled on to his side.

“Goodnight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right! That was all supposed to be one chapter, which I think is pretty obvious, but it's now two so we could fit everything in! We're building to something here. Will the dam of all this tension break next chapter?? TUNE IN NEXT TIME to find out!


	6. Excited

 

Shouyou woke up, like usual, at dawn.

Super warm. Super snug.

Super _duper_ hard.

He grunted as he twisted beneath the blanket and reached down the front of his shorts—dry, thank god. He re-adjusted himself so he wasn’t straining so much against the crotch of his underwear and grimaced against the wave of pleasure-pain that shuddered through him. He ached. It felt like his dick had been up all night doing pilates, and now it was completely _done_.

“Ow,” he said, just a whisper.

He couldn’t remember what he’d been dreaming about.

That was probably for the best.

Sitting up stung another gasp out of him, but he was able to spread his legs enough to finally be comfortable. The blankets fell away from his shoulders and he felt the cold air of Kenma’s room touch him. He yawned and shivered at the same time, halfway between awake and dazed.

Outside, the sun was just turning the sky orange. It peeped through the edges of Kenma’s curtains and blazed a trail of warm light across the floor. Across Shouyou’s knees. Up the side of Kenma’s bed.

He looked over.

Kenma was asleep. _So_ asleep. Shouyou couldn’t figure out how, but it was like he was sleeping normally and then some extra on top of that. His blond-and-black hair was splattered across his pillow, like someone had spilled gold paint around his head. His mouth was open just a little, and his eyelids were so loosely closed you could see slivers of the whites of his eyes.

He was so pale. And kind of...gentle.

Shouyou was stuck staring for a minute.

His eyes followed the shape of Kenma’s neck and shoulders. He must be a restless sleeper, Shouyou thought, because at some stage during the night he’d managed to kick his blanket down to his waist. One of his arms was twisted up next to his head. The other behind his back. The bottom of his shirt had ridden up above his navel, shorts and underwear dropping away beyond the lip of the blanket.

Shouyou snorted.

He’d never really _seen_ Kenma’s skin before. Shins and forearms and face, of course. But never anything else.

Now he thought about it, that was kind of odd. Kenma was a setter, and setters were _always_ reaching above their heads. Kageyama, when he was in his loose training gear, might as well have been wearing a cut-off top for the amount of times he flashed his stomach. But Kenma, in all the time they’d trained together, was careful about it. He never let it show.

Seeing it now made Shouyou feel like he was watching a movie his parents had _explicitly_ told him not to. Like he was sneaking a sip of alcohol from some adult's bottle and trying not to get caught.

Come to think of it, this was exactly what it felt like when he was reading _BLUSH!!_ yesterday.

Kenma had one of those tiny, almost healed-over belly buttons—an oval that looked like it was stretched out. A totally flat stomach, with just a hint of definition here and there. He looked soft, but sleek. Almost frail. He didn't have the rough edges and lumps and lines that creased up Shouyou's own torso. The difference between them was like a cheap, practical car to a flashy, expensive one. Both their cars worked, but Kenma's looked a whole lot nicer. Little goosebumps were pricking up on his otherwise totally smooth skin, and it made Shouyou shiver.

 _He must be freezing_ , he thought. Exposed like this.

And he reached out with the edge of the knuckle of his right index finger. Rested it gently against Kenma’s side. The flesh didn’t give—tight and firm—but it was cold. So cold that Shouyou’s warm hand felt searing hot against it. He traced his hand…

He traced…

A shattering _thud_ crashed through his chest, and he snatched his finger away. Red-hot blood flooded through his entire body as he felt his pulse pound through his neck and temples. With his other hand, he reached out and pulled the blanket back over Kenma’s sleeping body.

He stood up.

Still _so_ hard.

And went to change into his running shorts.

And while he was in the bathroom, sitting on the lidded toilet and waiting impatiently for himself to soften, he remembered. That scene from _BLUSH!!_ Shino looking at Kaoru, at the shape of his bare shoulders and neck. The words he'd used. “Soft”. “Sleek”. “Pale”. “Almost frail”.

_4 – BE ATTRACTIVE!_

He laughed again, like he had last night. Only this time, he wasn't so sure it was funny.

Because slowly, item by item and in perfect order, _BLUSH!!_ was starting to come to life.

 

***

 

Outside, the cold air smacked him fully awake.

He didn’t know the area well, so he kept his course simple. Two blocks only. Around and around and around. Sprinting like he was trying to qualify for the Olympics. Like he was being chased by a bunch of pissed off Tokyo tigers.

The energy in him was bleeding out of every pore, and he couldn’t move fast enough to drain it all. The last time he felt like this was in the gym yesterday, slamming Kageyama’s spikes into the far wall until he couldn’t move any more.

Yes. That was what he needed.

Keep moving until he was _exhausted_.

Out here—away from Kenma’s room, freezing arms and legs slicing through the bitterest winter’s morning since forever—his brain was working differently. It was shook out of the mode it’d been in since yesterday. Suddenly he could think about more than one thing—about more than just doing what felt fun with Kenma—and feelings like embarrassment and guilt and confusion were back in play.

What...was that just now?

Kenma was _sleeping_. He shouldn’t have...he didn’t want to…

Why did he even touch him in the first place?

The fizzy bottle of questions inside his head had been violently shaking since yesterday afternoon, and now he’d popped the lid. They boiled out, unstoppable. Way too many to answer. Way too many to even know where to start.

Pizza baby? _Forgetting_ his bag—had he forgotten it??—and putting on a show in a towel? Hanging out half naked? If this was Kageyama’s house, would he have done the same thing? Wouldn’t he have made _sure_ he wore a shirt, to be polite? And what was going on with his _dick_. Why was it up and down all over the place, like it had ADHD?

_Why was it starting to stiffen up even now?_

Why hadn’t he given Kenma _BLUSH!!_ yet?

What was it about Kenma’s room that made him act like that?

Were these even the important questions? _How_ was he supposed to know?

He sped up. Somehow. Bolting like he was back at Tokyo station, sights set on Kuroo’s car. Any second now the tingling in his legs would give way to pain. The air rushing through his throat would struggle to catch up with how much his blood needed. All these thoughts and questions would turn in to one big mushy pile and he’d be able to forget all about them.

He hadn’t come to Tokyo to get confused.

He’d come here to have a good time with Kenma. And play volleyball.

 _YES_ , he thought. That was it. These questions, all this stuff that was zipping around his head that he couldn’t find an explanation for...why did any of it matter? Kenma was having fun. _He_ was having fun. Today wouldn’t be any different.

In a few hours, he’d be back on a volleyball court.

Anything that didn’t make sense out here would definitely make sense there.

He pushed through the pain barrier and felt the runner’s high start to massage his brain. Soon, it would just be him and the road and the wind. No thoughts, just a feeling. Before that happened, he focused all his energy on figuring out _what_ that feeling would be. Forget the why, forget the _reasons_.

How did he feel?

And that, at least, was easy. It was surging up from inside him and spreading out to the ends of each finger, each toe, into every one of the hairs on his head, into his teeth, his tongue, his lips. It was the power source for all this energy in him now. A feeling he knew. Like an old friend he could trust. It was the same feeling he got before a volleyball match. The same feeling he got whenever they went training with another school, or when he learned something new, or when he was about to try something he never had before. It was all dressed up as fear and confusion and anxiety. But he'd been through it enough to recognize it for what it was.

A smile tugged at the edge of his mouth.

His brain went blank and his breathing evened out.

He felt _excited_.

 

***

 

"Hinata, nice kill!"

Shouyou heard the volleyball he'd just spiked smack into the far wall of the gym as he crashed back down to the court. In front of him, on the opposite side of the net with his arms still gawking over his head, was a giant with silvery-white hair.

Lev. The biggest cat in Nekoma's litter.

Shouyou drew himself up to full height, almost tip-toed, and managed to strain himself to Lev's armpit.

“You bet!” he said, digging into Lev with his eyes and wearing the proudest smile he had. “That's the spike that stopped Ushiwaka. You stood no chance!”

Lev burst out laughing.

He had a laugh that made his whole body shake. And when you had a body as big as his, that made your laugh a physical _thing_ in the room. Clothes rustled across your body, your feet pounded the court as you shuffled around, your enormous lungs pushed out enough air to make a draft.

“You brought it out just for me?” Lev said. “I feel special.”

“That's funny,” another voice joined in. Shouyou's eyes flicked left and found Yaku, who was almost as short as Shouyou was. “Here I was thinking you might feel _embarrassed o_ r _ashamed_ for totally flubbing that block.”

“Yaku!” Lev said, straightening up. And even though he towered over his senior, he somehow seemed so much smaller. “Come on. Kuroo yells at me for blocks. You only yell at me for receives.”

“Feel embarrassed, Lev,” Kuroo said.

Shouyou laughed.

The whole gym, filled with all nine of Nekoma's red-and-black players, laughed along, too. Shouyou could even hear Kenma's soft chuckle from off to his left. Lev stood up, all 195 centimeters of him, and gave them all a big, exaggerated shrug.

You couldn't embarrass Lev.

“The ace doesn't need to block! He only scores p—aHH!”

He flinched as Yaku's foot collided with his butt.

Shouyou had seen Yaku do this to Lev before. Dozens of times.

The big cat just didn't know when to shut up.

The two sides reset themselves and got ready for the next point. They were playing a five-a-side practice match, and Shouyou couldn't help feel like the odds were stacked against them. Their side had Inuoka, who was tall and strong, and Kai, the vice captain. But between Shouyou, Kenma and Shibayama—the backup team libero, and the only volleyball player Shouyou knew who was actually _shorter_ than he was—the average height difference between the two sides must've been half a meter.

Lev and Kuroo were both towers. Yamamoto and Fukunaga weren't that far behind them, and _still_ taller than almost everyone on this side of the net. Then Yaku to round it out. Maybe the best libero in all of Japan.

 _After_ Nishinoya, of course.

“It _was_ a nice kill,” Shouyou heard Kenma say.

He turned to face him and grinned.

“Thanks to the great toss!” he said.

“As good as your setter?”

Shouyou huffed a laugh.

“For a regular quick, even _better_. You let me make way more decisions than Kageyama does. It's nice to be trusted.”

“I barely have to do anything,” Kenma said. “I feel like I could throw the ball anywhere and you'd find it.”

Across the way, Inuoka laughed.

“You're the ideal match for our low-energy setter, Shouyou,” he said.

“Not low-energy,” Shibayama said. “Energy _efficient_.”

Kenma shrugged.

“Shouyou has enough energy for all of us.”

“Right!” Shouyou said.

From the other side of the net came Kuroo's impatient voice.

“OI. Does _anyone_ feel like serving?”

Shibayama—the ball clutched in his hands—jolted so hard he almost lifted off the court.

“Sorry, captain!” he called back, and rushed to take his place on the service line. Shouyou watched him go, then flicked his eyes back to Kenma for a second.

Kenma raised one questioning eyebrow.

“What?” he said, half-smiling.

Shouyou scrunched up his nose.

“I feel like we're switched around from last night,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Shouyou said. “Today _I'm_ Titanis.”

Kenma's half-smile went full force.

“Oh, and I'm Tikachu, huh?”

“You're Tikachu,” Shouyou said, and he felt inflated as the ball.

And the more he thought about it, the more it was true.

Shibayama served the ball, and the other side sent it back. As the others arranged themselves for the counter-attack, Shouyou could definitely see the parallels. Tickachu was small. Low-profile. He only ever spoke in little squeaks and, if you weren't paying attention, you might overlook him entirely.

Shouyou grinned, and pushed off from the court with his right foot.

The ball fell to Kenma's fingertips, and they locked eyes for just a second.

Tikachu _looked_ cute.

But every now and then, he turned into an enormous, deadly, fire-breathing dragon.

Kenma's toss was pinpoint. Almost as pinpoint as Kageyama's. It floated past Shouyou's face, past his shoulder, past his elbow. With every bit of strength he could muster, he slapped his palm forward and felt the sting of contact.

The ball shot from his hand like a bullet from a gun.

Point Kenma's team.

Shouyou hit the ground and spun on Kenma, thumb pressed to his chest.

“Titanis!” he said, declaring it like it was the _only explanation_ for what happened.

Kenma laughed and shook his head.

And then, without giving Shouyou a second to prepare for it, put two fingers behind his head in the shape of ears and threw his voice up high.

“Tika-chu,” he said, mimicking the little character's voice.

Mimicking it _perfectly_.

Shouyou couldn't stop the laugh that came barking out of him. He felt bad about it, because Kenma straight away dropped his hands and looked to the floor, totally embarrassed. Like he was a tiny little kitten, and Shouyou's bark had terrified him into hiding. Kenma hated being the center of attention, and Shouyou knew it. But...but that impression...the look on his face...even his awkward little shuffle now.

It was like cute little Tikachu had come to life.

“You giggle this much at Karasuno practice, Shrimpy?” Kuroo called out.

And even though Shouyou _so_ wanted to explain why he was laughing and why everyone _needed_ to see Kenma's impression of Tikachu _right now_ , he didn't. That would be...like a betrayal, or something. The only reason Kenma had done something so out of character in the first place was because he trusted Shouyou.

So he turned on his heel and bowed.

“Sorry, Captain!” he shouted.

“No wonder we always beat you,” Kuroo called back.

Shouyou gritted his teeth as he straightened.

“Ooo,” Lev said. “You just gonna take that, Hinata?”

And Shouyou said the magic words that restarted the game.

“One more!” he shouted.

And off they went. Twice as intense as before. Shouyou jumped and ran and decoyed and spiked, and when it was time he threw all his effort into receiving and blocking. He was still rough around the edges. He was still nowhere near as polished as he wanted to be. But he was _getting_ there, and something about Nekoma's gym was spurring him on. Kuroo's teasing. Lev's enthusiasm. _Something_.

Here and there, Shouyou spared a glance for Kenma. At first he wasn't sure why he kept sneaking looks, but eventually it clicked. And it was stupid. He knew it was stupid. But he _needed_ to check if it was his memory, or whether Kenma really was just careful.

He waited for the next point. The ball made it's way above Kenma's head, and he reached up to set it to Inuoka. Shouyou only had a second to look, but it was all he needed.

Kenma's arms went up. He jumped, just a little.

His shirt jostled and raised...

And then it was over. Shouyou forced his eyes back to the game, and leaped through the air like the ball was coming for him. It sailed by, and into Inuoka's hands, and the point went to their side.

“A little slow on the decoy there, Hinata,” Kai said.

“Yeah!” Shouyou said. “Sorry about that!”

It was worth it, though. Because now he knew for sure.

Kenma _never_ let anyone see his belly.

 

***

 

Kuroo called a break when the scores were locked at 31-31.

“Kenma seems in high spirits today,” Kuroo said, rubbing sweat away from his ears.

Shouyou looked out to where Kenma was talking with Lev. His arms were raised, showing the much taller boy how to perform some kind of synchronized attack. He didn't look very animated by normal standards, but for Kenma this was, apparently, practically a concert.

“It's weird to me when you guys say stuff like that,” Shouyou said.

Kuroo tilted his head.

“Oh?”

“Mm,” Shouyou said, nodding. “This is just...Kenma. He's always like this.”

“When you're around, sure,” Kuroo said. “You motivate him.”

“How?”

“I don't know,” Kuroo said. “But whatever you do, don't stop.”

“I just have fun,” Shouyou said.

“Then keep it up,” Kuroo said, his sharp-edged grin spreading. “Maybe you should come play for us, eh? Move to Tokyo? You could have this much fun _all_ the time.”

And without warning, Shouyou's brain catapulted itself somewhere else. Kuroo had said some words...in the exact right order. Like they were a trigger phrase for a memory he'd buried in his head, waiting to pop out and ambush him later. What was it...what was the phrase...

The cover of _BLUSH!!_ burst into his head.

The formula.

Item one, two, three, four...

 

 _5 – A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE_.

 

_Show them what life would be like if you could do this all the time._

 

He shook himself. Whipped his head back and forth like a wet puppy drying itself. It'd been hours since he'd thought of _BLUSH!!._ Hours since he'd woken up that morning and started piecing it together like some kind of...prophecy, or something impossible like that.

Those hours had been helpful.

He'd been able to come back down to reality a bit. Get a dose of fresh air and sunshine and remind himself of what was real. Things like Volleyball. And Kenma's bedroom. And Lev's crazy-tallness. And Kuroo's weirdly styled hair.

And the fact that Manga wasn't a magic spell.

 _BLUSH!!_ was not coming to life.

It was _not_.

“Yo,” Kuroo said. “You awake, Shrimpy?”

“Ah!” Shouyou said. “Yeah, I just got lost in thought.”

“Well, don't think too hard,” Kuroo said. “That's Kenma's job.”

He started to walk away, then stopped.

“You two are coming to the shrine tonight, right?” he said.

Shouyou nodded.

“Yeah! I've never been to a new year celebration in Tokyo before.”

And Kuroo laughed before he turned back around.

“Yeah,” he said. “Neither has Kenma.”

Shouyou stared after him.

What was _that_ supposed to mean?

He heard his phone chime in his bag, the sound like a whistle cutting through his thoughts, and went diving for it. Two texts had come through, one after the other—which meant Kageyama. He always finished his first message a word or two short of what he wanted to say. This time it was:

 

_Oi. You better not be slacking_

 

And then:

 

_off, dumbass_

 

Shouyou bared his teeth at the phone and let out a little hiss. His fingers wanted to start bashing out a reply as quickly as possible. Something cheeky and snarky that would rile Kageyama _right_ up. He'd be in the gym at Karasuno right now, training with the rest of them. What could he say...

 _Miss me THAT much?,_ he started with.

Then erased it.

_Think you're king of Tokyo now as WELL as the court?_

He erased that, too.

He could do better.

He bounced on the spot for a sec, up and down on the balls of his feet, thinking frantically. If he left it too long, Kageyama would drop his phone and go back to practice. He needed...he needed...

His eyes flicked to the pile of discarded jackets and bags against the gym wall and lit up.

_That!_

He raced to the closest crumpled jacket—on top of Kuroo's bag, so it must have been his—and folded himself into it. It was huge, but that didn't matter. In fact, that'd make it even better. Underneath the jacket was a set of sunglasses, and Shouyou's heart pounded with delight.

Perfect.

“Oi, Shrimpy,” Kuroo said. “What are you doing with that?”

“Kuroo!” Shouyou said. “Quick, I need your help.”

And before Kuroo could ask any more questions, Shouyou started waving at Kenma. At Shibayama. At Lev. At everyone standing close by.

“You guys, too. I need a photo.”

“Oh!” Lev said. “For Karasuno?”

“Ha,” Kuroo said. “All right. I endorse this theft of my belongings, but only for comedy's sake.”

The group pushed in—Kuroo and Lev at the back, towering over the rest. Inuoka leaned down in front of them. Shibayama crowded in next to Shouyou, and Kenma hovered. Sort of in frame but not really.

“Here, Kenma,” Shouyou said, sticking out his hand. “Get in.”

Kenma did as he was told and ducked beneath Shouyou's arm. Leaning over so he fit. Shouyou clamped his hand down on Kenma's shoulder, lined the camera up, and set his face with the most uninterested and bored expression he possibly could.

“Everyone look cool,” he said.

Two seconds later, he snapped it.

And it came out _perfect_.

“Ha,” Kuroo said. “We look like we're Yakuza.”

“So cool!” Lev said.

“We look bored,” Kenma said, and Kuroo elbowed him.

“Says the expert.”

Shouyou couldn't stop grinning at it. He looked ridiculous. Oversized, bright red jacket and a pair of huge black sunglasses. The others were all doing their best to look unimpressed, or at something off-screen. Kenma, especially, looked like he was made for a photo just like this. Jaw tilted back. Eyes half closed, looking down his nose.

Shouyou tapped out the first caption that came to mind— _cool enough to be a cat—_ and sent it to Kageyama.

And then to Yachi, and Yamaguchi, and Taiga, and Tanaka, and even Tsukishima.

“Look at you, Shouyou,” Shibayama said, straining to see over his shoulder. “You fit right in with our team of weirdos.”

“Ha,” Shouyou said. “I do—”

And halfway through his sentence, he choked on the words. Because that buried memory was flooding back to him. The cover of _BLUSH!!_ . The formula that wouldn't leave him alone. _A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE._

“—don't I?” he finished.

“All right,” Kuroo said. “Kindly de-jacket, Shrimpy. We need to get on with practice.”

“Right,” Shouyou said.

Everyone scattered, this time getting ready for receive training. Shouyou took the few steps to Kuroos bag, lay the sunglasses on top of it, and then shrugged out of the jacket. He folded it so the sleeve ran across the top. NEKOMA, it said.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

 _BLUSH!!_ was _not_ coming to life.

It was just manga.

He lay the jacket down just as his phone lit up with replies.

 _LOL_ from Yamaguchi.

 _Dumbass_ from Kageyama, king of vocabulary.

 _SO COOL HINATA_ from Tanaka.

Nothing at all from Tsukishima.

And then, from Yachi:

 

_Ha!! Did Kenma like his present??_

 

He stared at the message for a second.

Thought about writing back.

And then tossed his phone, and ran back to the court.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIGHT guys I swear we are getting toward the end of Part One, and you can probably sense all these FEELINGS and CONFUSION coming to a head! If you're hanging out for some payoff, just hang in there a *little* longer, hahah. Next chapter we're off to a New Year bell ringing ceremony! 
> 
> Also: I am trying SUPER hard to get a cover organized for this fic. I'm so rusty on painting though, and I really really want to get a 'manga cover' style working because it's just so on theme, haha. As soon as I have that down I'll post something! PLEASE let me know if you can miraculously make me a great drawer overnight X'D


	7. A Funny Feeling About This Festival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, this is a little different to what I expected. This and the next chapter were originally one, but we were pushing 8000 words, and it needed a split. On the bright side, it made things a lot more focused, so hooray! The next chapter is mostly finished, so it will be up super quick!
> 
> BEFORE WE START: IMPORTANT FAN ART!! 
> 
> [ SHOUYOU AND KENMA AS SLEEPY LIONS](http://68.media.tumblr.com/14a44981e68fb04637b06066506082e7/tumblr_okk8yhyKPX1qhmbb1o1_1280.png)
> 
> And 
> 
> [ SHOUYOU AND KENMA STEALING LOOKS AT EACH OTHER AND PRETENDING NOT TO!!](http://68.media.tumblr.com/79b3e2482fa430903f1acdc8bd7c9bf7/tumblr_okk8yhyKPX1qhmbb1o2_1280.png)
> 
> Both of these are by the super talented and delightful [LynseySch](http://lynseysch.tumblr.com/post/156549375243/was-reading-some-great-haikyuu-fanfic-by), who has a beautiful [website](http://www.lynseysch.co.uk/portfolio.html). I am SO chuffed with these!! THANK YOU AGAIN to LynseySch!!

Seven:

A Funny Feeling About This Festival

 

 

 

Tokyo had everything.

Shouyou had never seen so much  _everything_ in his life.

Nekoma training finished just before midday, and once Kuroo dropped them both home Kenma insisted on showing Shouyou the sights. A quick change of clothes and they'd set out on foot into town.

Shimokitazawa. The coolest  place Shouyou had ever seen.

“Is everything here _old_ or _new_?” Shouyou said.

“Both,” Kenma said.

It reminded him of Torono, with its quaint little shops and old-style roads and houses and gardens. Except it was like the whole town of Torono was crammed into  _every single street_ . Book stores and cafes and music stores and galleries spilled from one building to the next without any care for where one ended and another began. There was art on every surface—posters and paintings and sculptures. Musicians were stationed on street corners like crossing guards.

“It's amazing!” Shouyou said.

Words that he got used to repeating over and over through the day.

Kenma took him to an outdoor cafe for lunch. He ordered something he'd never heard of before, but the waitress assured him was like a cheese sandwich. And it was, except she'd forgotten to include the part about it being the greatest cheese sandwich ever to exist.

“ _It's amazing!”_

From there, Kenma led him to the metro, where they navigated the bustling crowd like birds flitting through tree branches. He took Shouyou to Shinjuku, and they scaled the floors of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building to see the city from its observation deck. The weather was clear, and Shouyou could see for miles. It was like a bedroom floor filled with lego that someone kept getting bored with. Towers jutting up here and there, stretches of much smaller buildings, and every so often an empty square of green. Like they'd left a patch of carpet to pick their way through the mess of plastic bricks.

_Amazing_ .

Another train to Akihabara, where the streets were filled with life-size action figures and the stores were stacked with more books and games and figurines than should rightfully exist on the planet. They found themselves in an arcade that had a huge, arena-like setup for playing BBB. Shouyou made Kenma play Tikachu this time, and he even managed to win a game or two.

_Amazing_ . 

Every single thing, one after the other.

Amazing, amazing, amazing.

When they finally made it back to Shimokitazawa, it was nearly six o'clock. Kenma chewed the inside of his cheek as he checked his phone, and lulled his head Shouyou's way. 

“Are you hungry? There'll be food at the shrine tonight, but we could have something before we go.”

Shouyou caught Kenma's eyes for a second and saw the way they drooped. One of the first things Kenma ever told him, way back on the day they met in the hills of Torono, was that he hated getting tired. And since he'd come to know Kenma, he knew that 'tired' came a lot more quickly for him than it did for other people.

This had been a big day, even for Shouyou. An early run. Training all morning. The afternoon spent train hopping, sightseeing and gaming.

He ignored the pang in his belly.

“Nah,” he said. “Unless you are?”

Kenma smiled.

“I'm fine,” he said. “Besides, it's food carts for miles at the festival tonight. We'll make up for it there.”

“ _I'm_ buying this time,” Shouyou said, flipping his wallet over and over in his hands. “My parents gave me all this spending money and I'm not going home with it still in my pocket.”

Kenma laughed, and they started toward his house.

“Was today fun?” he asked.

Shouyou already had a word picked out and ready to go.

“Amazing,” he said.

 

***

 

For the first time ever, Shouyou was loving the look of himself in dressed-up clothes.

He wriggled around inside the new shirt and jacket until it was sitting just right and tugged at the scarf Kenma had loaned him. The jacket gave him  _shoulders_ . The scarf covered up his skinny neck and really made it look as though, underneath all this, he could maybe have some muscles. And then, because he  _didn't actually have any_ , the whole outfit pulled together at his narrow waist. 

It felt...tall. Maybe not real-life-numbers tall, but close enough.

He pushed through the bathroom curtain and back into Kenma's room. 

“Thanks for the scarf!” he said, hands in his pockets, walking different. Something about the pants and shoes made him take long strides. Something about the scarf and jacket made him keep his back straight. 

Tall. 

“No problem,” Kenma said.

He was sitting on his bed, knees hugged to his chest, phone pressed almost up to his nose. Shouyou smiled. This was Kenma's favorite pose when he was in between sets at training. There was a whole world on the other side of the screen that he loved to visit whenever he could.

Still. He wanted Kenma to look at  _him_ .

“I wasn't expecting it to be cold enough but _brrr_ ,” he said, stooping to stuff his day clothes into his bag. Somewhere in there, hidden at the very very bottom of everything, was _BLUSH!!_.

He'd give it to Kenma tomorrow. 

That's what he'd been telling himself all day. A going away present. A thank you for having me present.

It made the most sense.

“What time is Kuroo picking us up?” Shouyou asked.

“Eight,” Kenma said.

Shouyou checked his phone. That put him here in about ten minutes.

“So good of him to drive,” Shouyou said, even if his stomach was a bit woozy at the memory of Kuroo's lead foot. “It must be great knowing someone with a license. Nobody at Karasuno has one. Asahi says he's too nervous to take the test, and Suga and Daichi don't have time between studying and club. Not that we really need cars in Torono, though.”

Shouyou rounded on Kenma's bed.

Hands in his pockets and chest stuck out like was posing for a magazine.

Kenma didn't look up.

“Hmm,” was all he said.

Shouyou squeezed his eyebrows together. 

This was unusually quiet, even for Kenma.

He took a few steps to the left and tried to catch a glimpse at what Kenma was looking at on the phone. If he was reading, or something like that, the last thing Shouyou wanted to do was chatter away in the background! Reading was hard enough when there  _weren't_ any distractions.

But there were no words on Kenma's screen.

There wasn't anything at all on Kenma's screen.

He was staring at nothing.

Or maybe not even that. It kind of looked like his eyes were closed.

A little twinge of fright ticked through Shouyou's chest. He felt like there were a few clues falling in to place right in front of him, and he hoped he could put them together. Things like Kuroo, off-handedly mentioning that Kenma had never been to one of these festivals before. Like the way Kenma shrank from crowds and attention, and all day today had steered them toward quieter places. Like the conversation they'd had last night about anxiety and...and...

Agh,  _duh_ , Shouyou thought.

Kenma gets anxious. This wasn't even a hard one.

What was it he'd said?

 

_I'm okay once I get there. But before that, in the buildup, it's like...scary_ .

 

Shouyou was  suddenly frozen.

All at the same time he was determined to do the right thing next, and annoyed that it'd taken him this long to notice something was off, and terrified that he was about to mess everything up, and outraged that Kenma had to go through this, and nervous that he was reading way too much into things in the first place.

All that height he'd felt just seconds ago was draining away.

The longer he watched Kenma take deep, quiet breaths, the shorter and smaller he felt.

And to make it worse, t he quiet was getting suspicious. That was his fault. Because he was a noisebox that never shut up, going too long without speaking was louder than screeching at the top of his lungs. He had maybe five seconds to come up with something to say...

But  _what_ ?

He couldn't think of a single thing that didn't sound like 'cheer up'. And that, he knew, never helped anyone in the history of the world. People had tried it on him before big games, when he was feeling so nervous he could be sick any moment. Nothing made him feel worse than people ordering him to feel better. Nothing made him feel more embarrassed than suggestions for getting over it.

He always liked it best when people said...

He straightened. Like the realization came jolting from his bones.

_Nothing_ . 

When they just let him breathe it out.

But he couldn't really do  _that_ , could he? Just...go silent? Something was screeching at him that doing nothing at all was the same thing as drawing attention to the problem. And that's the thing Kenma hated most. Being the center of attention.

He needed to be there. But not be there.

To say something without words.

His legs started moving on their own. He took a couple of steps toward Kenma's bed and slipped off his shoes. The sound of them clipping to the floor made Kenma's shoulders twitch. And then, slowly, like he was trying not to scare away a sleeping pet, Shouyou lowered himself onto the mattress.

It creaked and dipped as it took his weight. He swung his legs around and brought his knees to his chest, mirroring Kenma's pose, and pushed backwards until he felt himself bump into something. A layer of thick jumper. Another layer of t-shirt underneath. Skin and bones beneath that.

Back-to-back, Shouyou let his chin rest on his forearms.

There.

“Shouyou?” Kenma said. 

Shouyou felt the words vibrate through his skin.

“It's okay,” he said. “I'm just sitting.”

He could feel Kenma moving. His neck twisting around to try and see behind him. A few seconds later, though, it went back to normal, and the two of them were settled. The quiet in the room wasn't such a problem when they could feel each other's breaths. In, then out. Syncing up with each other because it felt like the right thing to do.

Shouyou could feel Kenma's heart thudding through the back of his ribs.

“Is it bad?” Shouyou said.

Kenma bounced. A snort of laughter.

“Not really,” he said. “This is...it's just the time I usually back out. If I'm going to. Kuroo's so used to it that he'll wait _until_ eight o'clock to leave his house.”

Shouyou felt that pang of injustice again.

Why should Kenma have to feel like this? It wasn't fair.

“We don't have to go,” he said.

It surprised him when he felt those words kick his heart rate up a bit. He thought maybe it was because he really  _did_ want to go to the festival, but knew he'd agree to stay in an instant if Kenma asked. Then again, the raised heartbeat could also have something to do with the way he could feel warmth spreading through his crotch again. He looked down between his legs and frowned a furious, furious frown.

_Are you kidding me!? Not now!_

Kenma took an especially deep breath.

“It's fine,” he said. “I'll be okay once we get there. It's just...a lot of the time it's easier for me to stay home. But tonight I don't want to.”

Shouyou's heart fluttered a little more—either from Kenma's words or stress about what was happening in his pants. Maybe it was a two-way tie. When he first sat down it'd been to try and calm Kenma's anxiety, but now...

Well. He had a funny feeling about this festival.

His lips stretched into a forced smile.

“Good,” he said.

And he checked his phone again.

7:56.

Kuroo wouldn't be leaving for five minutes yet.

He had that long to calm down, at least.

Time to breathe.

 

***

 

“ _Lot_ of people this year,” Kuroo said.

But Shouyou could barely hear him over the crowd.

And the music.

And the singing.

And the ringing excitement inside his own ears.

The Meiji shrine was filled with enough stuff to send his senses into total meltdown. _Everything_ was covered in lights—buildings, trees, monuments, stalls, flashbulbs, and even some of the _people_ were wearing lights. The smell of a dozen different foods sizzling in the freezing cold air made his stomach growl and his throat itch. The frothing energy of the crowd, snaking its way from place to place, filled his legs with the same pent-up energy he was used to on the volleyball court. Sweet, melodious singing from beautifully-dressed women tangled with the louder and higher-energy stuff being piped in for the young crowd.

And every few steps, someone brushing past him. The busiest and most exciting places in Tokyo were all about being _touched_ , he thought. Coming from Torono in Miyagi—a place that made a big deal about the amount of space between people—it was an odd change. But not a bad one.

You couldn't help but be close to people here.

“We _have_ to find something to eat,” Yaku said. “Or I'll die before the year is out.”

Shouyou patted his stomach to try and calm the growl.

They'd met up with the rest of Nekoma outside the shrine right after Kuroo found a parking space. The walk to get inside was _so_ long, Shouyou wondered why they ever bothered driving in the first place. It was almost nine o'clock now. Just under an hour since they'd left Kenma's place.

The shrine was only a fifteen minute drive away.

“Yeah,” Kenma said. _Barely_ making it above the crowd noise. “We haven't eaten yet.”

“Oi, Skytree,” Yaku said, kicking the back of Lev's heel. Lev spun around, his big grin pouring down on them from what felt like a thousand feet in the air. “Lead us to some food, will you?”

Lev laughed.

“Create a slipstream!” he said. “Leave it to me.”

“What's a slipstream?” Shouyou said.

Kuroo grinned at him.

“It's when a huge object makes enough space for smaller ones to slip behind it,” he said. “And as objects go, Lev is one of the hugest.”

The whole team fell into rough height order, except Yaku who stayed close on Lev's heels to bark instructions. It left Shouyou, Kenma and Shibayama to trail the rest, gliding through the path that Lev was carving for them.

“Do you like Tokyo, Shou?” Shibayama said, and Shouyou puffed up.

“You bet!” he said. “There's so much _stuff_! I swear we walked all day and only saw a tiny bit of it.”

“Where did you go? Kenma?” Shibayama said. Shouyou liked the way he made sure to bring Kenma into it as well.

“Just to Akiba and the government building,” he said.

“Yeah,” Shouyou said. “Except when you say it like that it sounds like nothing. It was—”

“Amazing,” Kenma said, and Shouyou caught his little smirk.

“Amazing,” Shouyou said, laughing, and turned to explain to Shibayama. “I've been saying that a lot today. He's teasing me about it.”

Eventually they made it to the edge of the crowd and lined up for something to eat. Shouyou found himself queued for pork buns—unoriginal, but _just_ what he felt like—with Kenma beside him. Kuroo and Inuoka were keen for curry bowls. Yaku, Lev and the others wanted meat sticks.

Shouyou stole a glance at Kenma.

He'd been totally fine since they stepped out of the car and met up with the rest of the team. Shouyou knew it wasn't the same thing, but it really _did_ remind him of the nerves he got before a big game of volleyball. That feeling of being completely helpless against your body as it worked itself into knots, and the sudden way it all dried up as soon as something else took over.

For him, that usually meant adrenaline. _Usually_.

But tonight, something was off. Now that it was just the two of them in line, the odd feeling he'd had in Kenma's room was back again. It was like a weird...buzzing in his guts. One that spread through his lungs and up through his throat and made him feel a bit sick. One that spread downward into his pants and threatened to make him hard again.

He gritted his teeth the second he felt stirring down there.

_No_. Not here.

He lashed out for any kind of distraction.

“Hey Kenma,” he said, hoping his expression didn't look too desperate. “What do you call a pig with four eyes?”

Kenma tilted his head.

“What?”

Shouyou forced a full grin on to his face.

“A piiiig.”

Shouyou's grin leaped from his mouth to Kenma's, and the other boy buried his face in his hands. When he resurfaced, he was shaking his head the same way Natsu did when Shouyou told her jokes like this.

“Shouyou, that's...un _sow_ vory,” he said.

Shouyou pointed at him.

“AH! Like _that's_ any better!”

“You're right,” Kenma said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Let's quit while we're ahead. We'll just line up quietly for our delicious pork puns.”

Shouyou laughed, and his mind raced to think of something else. _Yes_. This was more like it. Laugh. Joke. Have fun. Don't let idiot thoughts and feelings try to take over where they weren't wanted.

He racked his brain for pun material.

Pigs. Pork. Buns. Food. Chops. Bacon.

_Bacon!_

“You're bacon my heart,” he said.

“Stop,” Kenma said.

And Shouyou did.

For a second. And then another second. And then a whole, complete other second after that. Then—

“If only we'd brought a _pig_ nic blanke—”

“ _Oh_ my god,” Kenma said, stuttering on the word 'god' as laughter puffed through his lungs, and he pushed Shouyou with his shoulder. Shouyou squealed—Kageyama would've called it squealing, anyway—and gave Kenma a light shove back. They jostled together for a few seconds, each trying to have the last word with just their bumping shoulders.

“Okay, okay,” Shouyou said, holding up his hands. “Okay. No more. I promise.”

Kenma smirked at him and put his hands back in his pockets. They went back to standing in line like normal people—probably to the delight of the other shrine-goers around them—and Shouyou's brain started zooming again.

The feeling of Kenma's bones was still tingling on his skin. It seemed to be getting _more_ noticeable rather than less. Shouyou wondered if it was because, in all his life, he couldn't recall Kenma ever touching him before. It didn't sound right at first. They'd known each other almost a year. Surely _somewhere_ in there...

But no. Never.

Earlier, when they'd been back to back in his room, was the first time they'd ever actually made body contact. And now, here in this line for food, Kenma's playful shove was the second.

Shouyou smiled.

Tokyo really _was_ all about being touched.

“You know what I want to drink with these buns?” Kenma said.

“Hm? What?” Shouyou said.

He didn't see the dark little smile—the Kenma _I'm about to_ win smile—until it was too late.

“Some sparkling white _swine_.”

Shouyou threw back his head.

“Nggghhhh _damn_ it!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it feels a _little_ like we dropped things in the middle, we kind of did. But this was a nice thematic place to leave it, and the next update will be along super fast. Hang in there, my slow burn friends!


	8. Duh, Shouyou

 

It was all going so well until one comment—one tiny, innocent joke—shattered Shouyou into a thousand pieces.

He’d been buzzing with joy all night. They’d listened to music, played carnival games—he’d managed to ring the bell on a mallet strength tester! Yaku won a gigantic, purple, plush cat on a shooting game. Inuoka named it Galra Keith. Shouyou  _loved_ Galra Keith.

He’d even managed to forget—mostly—about the weird nervous-excitement-fear-anticipation that was, by turns, making him giddy as a schoolgirl and hard as a rock. Left alone like this, with no outside forces to push or pull him in another direction, and with no shake or jolt or bump to knock him off course, he could have had a really normal, uneventful night of fun.

But New Year’s had other plans for him. And it all started with dessert.

_Fucking_ dessert.

He got ice cream. Kenma got floss.

Everyone else got...something. Shouyou couldn’t remember.

He slammed his ice cream down, ignoring the sharp pain in his head as the cold stuff surged through him. Kenma nibbled at his floss—half of it pink and half of it blue.

“How's it taste?” Shouyou said.

Kenma licked his teeth behind his lips and held the floss out to Shouyou.

“A bit too sweet I think,” Kenma said. “Try it.”

He meant 'pull a bit off with your fingers'.

Shouyou knew that. But the festival had gotten to his head, and he felt like his whole body was giggling. The urge to do something silly was infecting him.

He leaned in and took a bite right from the stick.

The wispy, brittle floss turned to sweet, sugary mush as he closed his lips around it. It melted through his mouth, sweet as anything he'd eaten before.

“Whoa,” he said.

“Right?” Kenma said, and he took another bite himself. “The pink part's supposed to be cherry and the blue part's bubblegum flavor. But they're both just...literally sugar.”

Shouyou laughed.

“What does bubblegum even taste like?”

Kenma raised an eyebrow, spun the floss stick around so there was a big open swath of blue, and shrugged.

“You tell me,” he said.

Kenma had taken a few bites from that side of the stick. Shouyou could see the spots where the fluffy blue stuff was dented, and the edges of Kenma's mouth had melted it into hard crystals. But that didn't stop him.

He leaned in and took another bite, just as big as before.

He let it roll about on his tongue for a minute and frowned.

“It tastes like cherry, apparently,” he said.

Kenma smirked and started to answer.

More than anything in the world, Shouyou wished he could have heard what Kenma was about to say next. Because that would mean Lev never noticed what they’d done, and wouldn’t have opened his big, tall, loud, annoying mouth.

“Haha!” Lev said, grinning so wide his eyes were closed. “You two.”

“What?” Kenma said.

Lev pointed straight at Shouyou.

“Sharing your floss like that,” Lev said.

Even then—without any other clues—something tightened up inside Shouyou’s guts. He felt it grip his insides and twist them around, working faster than his brain could. In there, buried deep, some part of him knew what Lev was about to say.

“You look like you're on a date!”

And that was it.

…

 _Snap_.

The words shattered through Shouyou for absolutely no reason at all. Hit him like a squall of stormy air and smashed every fragile thing inside him. That feeling like he'd been building up to something collapsed on itself. His heart, fluttering so happily all night, stopped for what seemed like forever.

“Lev,” Kenma said. And to Shouyou, he sounded like he was on speakerphone two rooms over. “Shut up.”

“It's cute!” Lev said, just as muffled.

When it remembered what it was supposed to be doing, Shouyou’s heart sprinted to make up for lost time. Thudding harder and more painfully than it'd ever done before. Coach Ukai's most unfair and impossible workout couldn't have come close to this. He felt like someone was using his chest as a punching bag.

That pain—actual pain in his chest, his muscle and bone—stung tears from the corners of his eyes.

No warning. Just tears, fully formed and hot and wet, rolling down the side of his face.

As soon as he felt them, he spun around.

Nobody could see.

Nobody was _allowed_ to see.

The entire crowd seemed to disappear. Everything in the world was gone except the one thought that was zooming around the inside of his head faster than Kuroo's car.

_What the hell is going on!_

He barely registered Lev's voice in the background.

“I was only joking.”

And Kenma's sharp response.

“ _Lev_.”

Two fresh tears—one from each eye—dripped on to Shouyou's cheeks.

_What...the hell..._

“Shouyou, ignore—” Kenma started. Somewhere off to Shouyou's right. Hopefully not close enough to see the salty wet tracks on his cheeks.

“Just need the bathroom,” he said.

Except it came out in that underwater-sounding, blocked-up way that meant he was crying. He didn't even know it was possible to go from a standing start to _this_ amount of crying so quickly.

Damn it, everything was going _so_ well.

“Back soon,” he said.

And walked away.

Fast.

 _Ran_.

 

***

 

Running didn't work.

His shoes weren't right. His pants were too tight at the thighs and didn't let him stride properly. The jacket was too heavy on his back and made it impossible to swing his arms the way he wanted to.

He hated these _stupid_ clothes.

He slowed to a walk and sucked down a dozen deep, heaving breaths. If running wasn't going to cut it, then he needed the opposite. Somewhere to sit. Somewhere nobody would bother him. Somewhere to be all by himself so he could disappear.

The shrine's gardens were huge, and Shouyou found a quiet spot in no time. There was an enormous pond not far from the edge of the festivities, and the two sides of it were interconnected by a dozen little wooden bridges. He picked one—the furthest one away from the lights and the sounds—and sat heavily on the edge of it.

His feet dangled just above the water.

Beneath the surface, he could make out the shape of fish.

His heart was slowing down. That was good.

The tears had stopped, too. Great.

His head was still spinning like a volleyball on the tip of Kageyama's finger, though.

This was the same way he’d felt this morning, sprinting through the outskirts of Shimokitazawa and trying to force himself to forget it. Only the swirling thoughts were twice as loud this time, and running wasn’t going to get rid of them. Even if he _was_ in the right clothes, he doubted he could run far or fast enough to leave it all behind.

He forced himself to remember the last time he cried. He'd done it a couple of times recently, but those were volleyball tears. Which were different. The whole _team_ had cried those tears when they'd lost to Seijoh last year. This wasn't like that. This was tears for no reason at all, and the last time he'd done _that_ was...

Well, he couldn't remember.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

Probably Kenma.

He thought about ignoring it, but couldn't. If any of Nekoma wanted to come looking for him, he needed to be able to tell them _no_. The last thing he wanted was to be found right now. Not after that display. Not after the big deal he'd accidentally made over a stupid, harmless, meaningless joke.

He fished the phone out and, to his surprise, found a message from Yamaguchi.

Two photos.

Yachi and Taiga in one, each wearing big bright hats and colored glasses, posing in front of the entrance to Torono Town Park. Tsukishima and Kageyama in the other, looking like they were about to strangle one another, and Yamaguchi's grinning face in the foreground. Shouyou read the caption underneath.

 

_Happy Karasuno New Year!_

 

He stared at it for a second.

At Yamaguchi's freckly face, and Yachi and Taiga's big, happy, silly smiles. At Kageyama's frowny, scowly expression and Tsukishima's smug I'm-so-much-better-than-you smirk. The photos reached off the screen and wrapped him up in a big, familiar hug.

Home.

For the first time since he'd arrived in Tokyo, he wished he was back home. In Torono, where everything made sense and everyone knew who he was and...where _he_ knew who he was. Shouyou Hinata. Middle blocker, Karasuno's greatest decoy and all-round volleyball nut who never went on dates and never thought about sex. It was so much easier to be that person when everyone expected it of you in the first place.

Not like here.

Nobody knew that here.

Who _he_ was was up to _him_. And that was...

That was way too hard.

 

 _Have you even thought about what_ you _want?_

 

Damn it, the _tears_ again.

He used the edge of Kenma's scarf to dab at them, and even in the dim light he could see the dark patches left behind on the red fabric.

He wanted to shout at them.

_Tell me what you want from me!_

But instead, he tensed up as he heard footsteps approaching. Clomping their way across the wooden boards. He looped an arm around the railing in front of him and leaned forward, determined not to let whatever stranger was passing by see him crying. He gritted his teeth as they got closer. The steps slowed.

 _Gahhh_ , _just keep walking_.

They slowed some more.

And when they were almost right behind him, they stopped.

He heard the rustling of fabric. Someone was bending...or sitting...

“It's only me,” Kenma said.

And before Shouyou could answer, he felt the long, flat, warm surface of Kenma's back press up against his. He grabbed on to the railing even harder—not because he was worried he might fall forward, but because he _needed_ to cling to something.

“Oh,” he said. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Kenma said.

Shouyou couldn’t begin to think of something else to say.

He thought maybe he could insist on being alone. He was sure Kenma would agree to it. But now he was here, it didn’t seem like there was any point to it. His bathroom excuse—already _super_ flimsy—was uncovered for the lie it was.

Kenma would have seen through it straight away, anyway.

Instead, Shouyou concentrated on the feel of Kenma’s back against his. His skin, hot beneath the layers he was wearing, was extra sensitive in the cold winter air. He could feel the bumps of Kenma’s spine pressing into him, just to the left of his own. There were other bumps, as well—shoulder blades like solid wings, jutting ribs, a fold of sweater that’d gotten caught between them.

A couple more tears traced their way down Shouyou's cheeks, but the stinging in his eyes stopped. It was weird. Suddenly, he wasn't thinking about home any more. It was okay being here, in Tokyo, where everything was scary and unknown. Because he had Kenma at his back.

That, at least, made him feel like he'd be okay.

He wiped the tears away and was happy no more seemed to follow. Whatever well he'd been drawing them up from had gone dry. His breathing was slowing down—matching Kenma's steady, long breaths.

They spent the next few minutes that way. Breathing together. Saying nothing, just feeling each other. Off in the distance, the new years festival was ramping up. The crowd sounds were getting more and more buzzy.

It made the quiet around the two of them seem even more soft.

“Hey Shouyou?”

“Mm?”

“Can I come around that side?”

Shouyou blinked.

“Yeah,” he said, and then cleared his throat so it was more voice than crackle. “Yes.”

And when Kenma moved, he left a patch of heat on Shouyou's back. The cold air sliced through it, all the way through his skin and to the bone. It made him shiver.

Kenma re-settled next to him, legs hanging off the edge of the bridge.

“Cold?” he said.

Shouyou shrugged, but Kenma pushed closer to his side. Their jackets were overlapping, now, and the edges of their thighs were just tickling one another. Shouyou let his leg roll outward a little so they bumped together properly, and felt Kenma push back against it. It was at least a little warmer, having someone sit close.

“I'm sorry about Lev,” Kenma said.

Shouyou squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed.

 _No_. _No no no_ , he told himself.

He shook his head, slowly, and flopped against the railing.

“That isn't it,” he said. And Kenma didn't say anything, so Shouyou was forced to figure out what he really meant. “I don't even know what _it_ is.”

His heart thudded so hard he could feel it pulsing in his fingers.

How to even begin describing it?

“I can't think,” he said, and it felt weird letting the words out of his mouth. “I try and figure stuff out and I...I can just never think of _what I want_. It's all locked away or mixed up with something else. But like...I keep looking at you, and it’s...”

But that was all.

He had nothing else he could add to make it any more easy to understand. The whole point was that _he_ didn't understand it, so how the hell was he supposed to explain so Kenma could?

His defeated sigh felt like it echoed across the entire pond.

“It's okay,” Kenma said. “I'm the only one here and _I_ say you don't have to figure anything out. We can go, if you want. My place isn't far to walk.”

But Shouyou shook his head.

That wasn't it. He didn't want to leave.

“It's fine,” Kenma said. “We can just sit. I like the quiet, anyway.”

Shouyou sniffled.

“Thanks,” he said.

And for a while, that's all they did. Shouyou couldn't be sure how long they sat quietly beside each other, staring out across the pond. The lights from the trees and walkways were reflected in the pitch black, and Shouyou darted his eyes from one to the other. Flickering little copies of the real world. He could sort of make out his own reflection, too. And Kenma's. Both dangling from the edge of the bridge.

...the bridge.

 

_These are important, somehow!??_

 

Shouyou lifted his head as the quote from _BLUSH!!_ muscled its way into his thoughts. Bridges were number seven on the formula for love. And number six was...

A moment of vulnerability.

Like, say...running out on a New Year's shrine trip in tears.

Shouyou didn't believe in prophecies and fate and destiny. Or at least he didn't believe in _little_ ones, like the kind that a fortune teller gives you at a carnival or a psychic tells you down the phone. He knew _BLUSH!!_ wasn't written by a time traveler or a magician who could make fiction come to life.

But it was written by _someone_ who knew how this all worked. Someone who knew love down to the number of steps you took to get there.

It wasn’t perfect. But right then, it was all he had. It was _something_ that helped explain all the unexplainable stuff going on inside him. All the unusual things he’d done. All the boners. All the obsession with skin and nakedness and...and _shampoo_.

He snorted.

A tiny puff of laughter that splintered the quiet.

“Funny?” Kenma said.

Shouyou snorted again, longer this time, and closed his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said. “There's this formula...”

But he stopped himself.

Collapsed against the railing and closed his eyes.

No. That wasn't the place to start.

“Kenma,” he said. He wasn’t sure if the rest of his question would follow, or whether he was about to projectile vomit every last bit of pork bun into the pond. “What’s the difference between what we’re doing this weekend and a date?”

He didn’t dare open his eyes.

Kenma was sitting close enough that Shouyou felt him stop breathing.

From the shrine courtyard, people started counting down. Ten seconds to midnight. He opened his eyes and craned his neck to look, wondering if maybe they should go back. The rest of the team had to be waiting for them. If they hurried, they'd only miss the first few gongs.

He turned back to suggest it.

But Kenma wasn't looking toward the courtyard. He was looking straight at Shouyou. His head tilted forward just enough so his golden hair fell across his forehead and across his chin. His big yellow eyes were steady, like he was staring right through Shouyou's clothes and skin and muscle and bones. Into something deeper than that.

He was sitting so close.

The countdown reached its end as they held each other's gaze, and the first of the New Year bells rang out. A deep, resounding _gong_ that filled the whole sky above them.

Shouyou could feel the rising in his pants again. Only this time it didn't bother him so much. This time, he was too absorbed by Kenma’s face to worry about it. His mind was taken up by the heat passing between their bodies. By the way Kenma's thigh felt against his.

The bell gonged again.

“Shouyou,” Kenma whispered. “I...”

Kenma cut off as Shouyou felt fingers on top of his fingers. First one, then two, and then Kenma's whole palm was covering the back of his left hand. Shouyou flipped it over, and they pressed their splayed-out hands together. Almost like they were comparing them. Shouyou's blood was rushing so hard through his veins he could hear it sloshing through his ear lobes.

 _Gong_.

Shouyou rotated his hand—just slightly—to the left. Each of his fingers shifted to fall between Kenma's, and he wrapped them around Kenma's palm. Gentle at first. But then, as he realized this was his skin—this was _Kenma's skin—_ he was touching, his grip tightened up.

Tokyo was all about being touched.

For the first time since he'd arrived here, he didn't worry about whether everything made total sense. He leaned over—slow and steady, like he was lowering himself into a hot bath—and pressed his forehead to Kenma's.

 _Gong_.

Shouyou could feel the breath from his nose hit Kenma's cheek.

 

 _8 – A MOMENT OF INTIMACY_.

 

He knew what that meant.

Every cell in his body was screaming it at him.

 _Especially_ the erect ones in his pants.

 _Gong_.

Shouyou tilted his chin forward.

Kenma tilted his forward, too.

Shouyou's heart felt like it was going to vibrate clear of his ribcage. Every single thought in his brain erased itself to make way for one, big, all-caps exclamation.

_MY FIRST KISS!_

Their lips pressed gently together like they were each terrified the other would pull away. So cold for the first quarter of a second. So _intensely_ hot after that. Soft and spongy as they wrapped around each other, but strength behind that, too.

Kenma puffed little breaths through his nose—gasps that couldn't escape from his preoccupied mouth. With each one, Kenma's body shook, like he was being tickled. Or poked. Each little movement was a jolt through Shouyou. From lips to chest to gut to groin and all the way down to his feet.

Kenma opened his mouth just a little. Shouyou went with it.

He didn't know what to do with his tongue. He thought Kenma probably didn't, either, because they just rested them against each other. A gentle greeting. A sort of tongue handshake. He'd never felt anything like it before—something so wet and slippery and warm and squirmy, yet somehow _not_ disgusting. Somehow the most opposite thing from disgusting Shouyou could possibly think of.

Shouyou could swear he heard ringing in his ears. A kiss was sensory overload in a way he didn't think was possible. He was used to being overwhelmed visually, or by a lot of noise, or even by temperature or by smell or a bunch of those things combined. A kiss, though, blitzed them all. He could feel a hundred different sensations on his lips and skin. Hear every tiny sound their bodies made. Smell their hours-old pork bunnish breath mixing together. Taste Kenma's floss, and better than that, taste _him_.

And then, as the next bell _gonged_ into the fresh air of a new year, they were apart again. Their lips made a _smchh_ sound as they let go of each other. Like they wanted to stay.

Shouyou kept his forehead pressed to Kenma's.

He felt burning heat spread across his face and skin and imagined it turning deep pink.

A blush.

Or no, not _a_ blush. _The_ blush.

Item number nine.

The blush that seals it.

“Shouyou,” Kenma said. “Is this...okay?”

 _Gong_.

Shouyou answered with another kiss. His lips were still burning from the first. His body felt like it was plugged into a dozen electric motors. He _needed_ this kiss. He needed it longer, and more intense.

He leaned his whole self against Kenma's side this time. Their ribs dug into each other. Shouyou could feel Kenma's hip bone in his side. He wrapped his arm around Kenma's back and gripped on to his other hip, keeping them both pressed tight together.

Kenma answered him with just as much enthusiasm. They pushed against each other's mouths. Shouyou felt him snake a hand around the back of his neck and slip it beneath the scarf. He tickled the skin there with two fingers, round in little circles.

 _Gong_.

The damn bell split them apart again.

“Yes,” Shouyou said. Breathy, like he'd just played a five set match against Shiratorizawa. “Yes, it's okay. Isn't it?”

And Kenma laughed.

“It's...the most okay. Ever.”

Shouyou knew it already. Deep down, he felt like he'd sort of known this was okay ever since he got here. Maybe before that, too. Of all the feelings that were exploding through his fireworks-barrel brain right now—and there were a _lot_ of them—there was one obvious one missing.

Because while he might have been exhilarated, and kind of terrified, and excited, and confused, and nervous, and worried, and horny, and a ton of other things...

The one thing he _wasn't_ was surprised.

“I think...just one more,” Shouyou said, leaning in for another kiss.

Each new year, the bells rang one hundred and eighteen times. Shouyou was too distracted to keep a proper count, but by the time they'd had their fill—by the time they'd worn each other out and figured out how kissing worked with the particular mouths and lips and teeth they each had—it must have been getting toward the final few gongs.

They had to go back.

Someone would come looking if they didn't.

And as they leaned in for what they _swore_ was the final kiss of the night, Shouyou finally figured it out. The missing element in the formula for love. Item ten. Shino had discovered it, too, while he'd been kissing Kaoru for the first time. Maybe that was why it'd been so difficult for Shouyou to guess when he'd first read about it.

Back then, he'd never been kissed. He hadn't felt any of these sensations and feelings. He hadn't realized what a _shared_ thing kissing was. But now that he had Kenma here, tucked in close, lips-to-lips, it was obvious.

 _Duh_ , Shouyou.

Item ten.

The thing that made all the other elements in the formula work.

It was _him_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH LOOK. Some of that tension finally snapped xD
> 
> Welp, there we go! That was all supposed to be one chapter but got far too long and wandering, and this is the result. Next chapter is the finale for part one!


	9. Time to Think

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note as we begin, guys!
> 
> So I bit the bullet and changed the rating to E. Not specifically because of this chapter (though it pushes close), but because of what I know is coming up. So! I'll post these at the beginning of any chapter where you'll encounter NSFW material:
> 
>  
> 
> **This chapter contains E material.**
> 
>  
> 
> BUT. I stress again. This particular one isn't too bad. I hope this made sense!

 

 

The hours-long wait til sunrise was difficult for Shouyou. Keeping quiet about something so earthshaking as what happened on the bridge while trying to be interested in...whatever everyone else wanted to talk about? Nearly impossible. Harder than the hardest homework. More challenging than the most skillful volleyball opponent. More frustrating than Tsukishima. 

Shrugging off everyone’s concerns about where he’d run off to by himself? Hard. Convincing Lev it had nothing to do with his joke? Hard. Reassuring Shibayama over and over again that he was fine now and didn’t need any tips on breathing or calming down? Hard. Trying to come up with a New Year’s wish to tell everyone as the sun came up that  _didn’t_ involve mouths, kissing, or Kenma? Super hard.

The car ride home was the worst part, though. Sharing the back seat with Kenma while Kuroo sat up front. Inches from Kenma’s body but separated by a solid wall of secrecy. Trying not to look at him too much, but also addicted to the thrill of catching his eye. Wondering what the hell was going to happen when they got home. Somehow, he was equally terrified by all possibilities. More kissing?  _Gah_ . No more kissing?  _Gahhh._

A totally stupid part of himself kept wondering if he'd misread the whole situation on the bridge. Whether they'd spent a good half hour  _accidentally_ kissing, and that they'd have a good and confusing laugh about what a mix up it all was.

Another totally stupid part of himself was still hard as a rock, and wanted Kenma's skin under his fingers, and lips on his mouth, and he wanted it  _right now_ . In front of Kuroo. In front of the entire city.

Which one was the real Shouyou?

He had no idea.

It was seven o’clock in the morning when they finally waved Kuroo off in front of Kenma’s house. To Shouyou, it felt like the last exit door was closing. Like someone had been asking him over and over for the last six hours 'are you sure you want to go ahead with this?', and they'd just now finally stopped.

Shouyou walked close on Kenma’s heel as they went to the front door. His left hand was brushing against Kenma’s right as they walked inside. Even that feather touch was enough to electrify him. He didn’t wait for Kenma to finish locking the door before he rushed to the big bedroom.

And then, finally, after hours and hours of waiting…

They were alone.

Standing opposite one another. Still. Barely even breathing.

There was a word for this, but Shouyou couldn't remember it. They used it in cowboy movies. When two gunmen were standing opposite each other, hands hovering over their guns, waiting to prove who could shoot the other one first. The bedroom felt like that dusty western town. The first one to speak was the winner.

So he tried to think of something to say, but  _everything_ sucked.

_Sorry about tonight_ .

Rubbish. And besides, he wasn't.

_We should talk about what happened_ .

Craaaap. This wasn't a TV show. And besides, the whole point was he couldn't think of anything to say. Trying to get through an entire conversation right now would cripple his brain.

_Well, I'm exhausted! Good night!_

It'd get him out of a conversation, maybe. But it'd also get him out of more kissing. He might not know what he wanted exactly, but he definitely knew what he  _didn't_ want. And he didn't want to go to sleep just yet.

_Please kiss me again._

...That was more like it.

But before he could get around to refining and perfecting it, he saw Kenma take a deep breath. Then a step forward. Shouyou watched him the way he'd watch a tiger stalk through long grass—tense all over, ready to listen to his fight-or-flight instinct. Except whatever the sexy version of that was. Fornicate-or-flight.

Kenma took another step, and Shouyou matched it.

_Now or never_ , he told himself.

Stop now or don't.

He took another step forward, and suddenly they were in arm's reach. Whatever time he thought he had to think this through was gone. He didn't want it anymore. He didn't need it. 

Maybe he hadn't needed it in the first place.

It all started so slowly.

Kenma's hand on Shouyou's cheek.

It was fresh out of Kenma's pocket, warmed all the way through, and white-hot against Shouyou's skin. He could feel it shaking just a little. The tiniest vibration. Then, excruciatingly gentle, he felt Kenma's thumb trace across his cheek bone. It tickled. Made his whole head twitch.

To Shouyou's racing heart and spinning head and raging hard-on, it was almost unbearable. But he didn't dare move any faster. He didn't want to ruin this—either by going off early or by making some ridiculous, unsexy blunder. He  _had_ to take it slow.

The heel of Kenma's palm worked it's way to the edge of Shouyou's mouth, and he kissed it. His lips made a perfect, romance movie kissing sound as he puckered them, and he made sure to take in the flavors of it. Kissing a hand was saltier than kissing a mouth. The skin was rougher, too.

Was this right? Were you supposed to kiss people's hands?

But he'd started, now, and the excitement to keep going completely overrode his fear of making mistakes. He hung his left hand from Kenma's wrist and took control. Kenma watched with an open mouth as Shouyou curled his hand into a fist and kissed each knuckle, slow and careful.

It was too much for Kenma.

He pulled his hand away and draped his arms over Shouyou's shoulders. Shouyou took a step forward, looping his arms around Kenma's waist and linking them at the back. They were pulled together tightly. Chests squeezed together, stomachs tickling each other, mouths and noses pressing in close.

Shouyou's heartbeat was a vibration—relieved that Kenma had taken back the lead, but also terrified he should be doing something more. Or something else. He  _needed_ to get it right.

This kissing wasn't like the bridge.

This was more intimate.  _Way_ more intimate.

He could feel more of Kenma's body, and all the tiny details were making things hotter than Shouyou ever thought possible. Being tucked underneath Kenma's arms was so warm and snug, but there was more. Close-in like this, he could feel Kenma's heart beating in his chest. He felt it with his  _own_ chest. Every sound Kenma made echoed through their skin and felt like it was coming from Shouyou's own throat.

They'd gotten better at keeping their tongues busy. He'd heard people talk about 'too much' tongue and 'not enough' tongue before, but he had no idea what that meant. For his part, whenever Kenma pushed forward with his, Shouyou tried to push back. Sometimes it meant they'd get locked in between each other's lips. Other times it meant Kenma's tongue would slip over the top of his, or underneath, and they'd wind up pressed in even deeper. 

Shouyou loved it when that happened. Because it made Kenma take a really big, deep breath that felt like it was coming straight out of Shouyou's lungs. It made him giddy.

It was just as Kenma took one of those deep, sucking breaths that Shouyou felt the hands on his back start exploring. Kenma had long, gentle fingers that seemed to be able to touch tons of different parts of him at once. Thumbs across his shoulder blades. Index fingers on his spine. Ring and pinkie fingers finding every little muscle and seam he had and stroking the length of them.

Shouyou answered by pulling Kenma's waist closer.

Their kissing suddenly stopped when their hips collided. Like they were on pause—their mouths hovering millimeters from one another. The room filled with nothing but silence.

Shouyou could feel Kenma's very, very hard dick digging into his own...very, very hard dick, and the contact sent a jolt of pleasure all the way through his body. Every muscle in his groin tightened and pulsed and twitched and  _ached_ as he squeezed his arms tighter.

Kenma moaned. A tiny, soft little moan. The barest, most wispy little 'Mmm' that squeaked as it faded. He followed it with a long breath that stuttered out of his lungs.

And it was the sexiest thing Shouyou had ever heard.

He launched back into their make-out, this time making sure there wasn't a fraction of space between them. Kenma's moans kept on as Shouyou pushed forward with his hips, and kept hugging Kenma's closer. He felt electric. Like he was alone in his bedroom or the shower, sneakily rubbing himself. Except he didn't have to be sneaky. He didn't even have to  _touch_ it. The rules about privacy and shame and embarrassment had, all of a sudden, changed.

For the first time, he stopped worrying that he didn't know what he was doing and  _went_ with it.

He felt Kenma's hands work their way up to the bare skin at the back of his neck. His long fingers snaked their way into his hair, and around the back of his ears, finding places Shouyou had never been touched before and teasing as much pleasure from them as he could. Shouyou could feel his legs get weaker as Kenma worked. He wanted to fall against him. Flop to the mattress.

But he didn’t dare move. 

Kenma pulled away from Shouyou's mouth and, firmly, turned his head to the side. For a split second, Shouyou was confused. But then he felt lips on the side of his neck, and a tongue flicking out between them to tickle his skin, and he almost collapsed to the floor. It was his turn to gasp as Kenma peppered him with licks and kisses, starting at the base of his neck and working his way up to the back of his ear.

He'd never felt anything like it before.

He let go of Kenma's waist and gripped his shoulders instead. An unfamiliar sound was leaking from his throat. One he was sure he hadn't made before, and one he couldn't stop making even if he tried.

“Mmnn....Mnnn...”

Kenma licked Shouyou's ear lobe. Then the edge of his ear.

“Mmn _ahh_.”

Shouyou buried his nose into Kenma's shoulder as he kept kissing his neck.  _How_ could a place so out-in-the-open like his  _neck_ be so sensitive? So receptive to lips and tongue? 

He took a deep sniff of Kenma's clothes. It smelled like his room, and like the food stalls at the shrine, and like something else he couldn't recognize. That, he thought, must be Kenma's smell.

His lips were burning.

His hands were itching.

He needed to  _do_ something with them.

He lifted his head and put his lips right next to Kenma's ear.

“Hey Kenma,” he whispered.

The first words either of them had said since they'd arrived back at Kenma's place. He sounded like Tanaka’s sister after three bottles of rice wine.

“Mmm?” Kenma said.

“This is going to sound really stupid.”

Kenma kept kissing him. 

“What is?” he said, mouth full.

“I need you to know,” Shouyou said, huffing against the ecstasy on his neck, “that _I_ know this is stupid, okay? But I have a favor to ask.”

Kenma kissed. Then kissed again.

“Name it,” he said.

“Can I...” Shouyou started, and even though he had Kenma's face buried in his neck—and was until just seconds ago grinding against his erect penis with his own erect penis—was still almost too embarrassed to ask. But no. 

He really, really needed this.

“Can I see your belly?”

Kenma's lips and tongue stopped, and he pushed away from Shouyou's neck. Shouyou braced himself...but Kenma was smiling. A skeptical sort of smile, but a smile at least.

“My...belly?” he said.

“Yeah,” Shouyou said. “It's...it's just a thing. I want to do.”

Kenma laughed.

Shouyou did, too, but mostly to cover his nerves. For some reason, he felt like this was the most high-stakes thing he'd done all weekend. Higher than the first kiss on the bridge. Higher than their early morning make out just now. It was like Kenma's belly was the make-or-break highlight of this entire trip, and if it didn't happen...

But Kenma dipped his head forward.

“Yeah,” he said. “You can see.”

And he reached down to tug at his shirt.

But Shouyou grabbed for his wrist.

“ _No_ ,” he said. “Let...let me.”

He bent at the waist—which wrung another agonizing shiver of joy from his hard-on—and reached out with both hands. Kenma's shirt was un-tucked and was hanging just below his belt line. Shouyou looped his fingers underneath it, hands spread outward to touch the tops of Kenma's thighs. 

Kenma rested his hands in Shouyou's hair, gently massaging at it, his pinkie fingers playing with his ears. Shouyou's senses almost went into meltdown. Fingers at his ears. Thighs underneath his hands. Body warmth spilling between them. The smell of Kenma's shirt. Just to the left of Shouyou's fingers, he could see the straining outline of Kenma's bulge. He gulped, and kept his hands moving upward.

Kenma gasped as Shouyou's fingertips spilled over the top of his waistline and on to naked skin. Shouyou's mouth dropped open without him knowing it. He kept his thumbs pushed together on the center line of Kenma's torso, just to make sure the shirt couldn't fall between them, and kept lifting. His fingers traced Kenma's sides. He felt the way his skin wrapped his hips, and then widened to take in his abdomen.

Then he caught his first glimpse of pale skin.

He kept lifting. 

His fingers touched ribs.

A belly button peeked out into the open. Either side of that, Kenma's skin was pulled tight across long and lean and graceful muscle. Not a lot of it, but in  _exactly_ the right places. A single, faint line that split his stomach in two. Two grooves that cut their way from the tops of his hips into the waistline of his pants. Further up, the underside of his rib cage protruded just a little further than the rest of his belly did. He didn't have a six-pack so much as he had two long, sleek and flat ab muscles that looked like they'd been painted there.

Shouyou stopped lifting when his thumbs were in the middle of Kenma's chest. The shirt hung down either side, like a set of theater curtains that were parted to let him see the feature presentation behind them.

Kenma's belly.

Kenma's  _belly_ .

He couldn’t stop staring.

“Shouy—”

Kenma started.

But he stopped when Shouyou started moving.

He didn't know what he was doing. He had no idea if this was the right move to make, or whether Kenma would like it, or whether it was just as weird as wanting to see his belly in the first place. But here it was, now. Right in front of him. So forbidden. So unseen and undiscovered by almost everyone in the entire world except him.

And he  _couldn't_ just keep staring.

He dropped to his knees, and before Kenma could say anything else, he leaned forward to put his lips on the bare skin in front of him. His nose pressed into the hard muscle of Kenma's abs as he kissed around his belly button, hands still raised to keep the shirt from falling. Like he was praying; knelt down before something sacred.

“ _Shouyou_ ,” Kenma whispered.

_Whimpered_ .

Shouyou couldn't stop. He kissed Kenma's belly button, then the spot just above it. All the way up one side and down the other. He traced his tongue across the faint but definite center line, almost all the way to the edges of his own thumbs, and then back to the bottom again. He had no plan. He just kept moving. He kissed the spot below Kenma's navel.

“Shouyou...”

And further down. 

He felt some hairs against his tongue.

“Shouyou...”

His next kiss was half fabric.  _Pants_ , he realized.

Something hard bumped against the bottom of his chin.

“Shouyou, wait,” Kenma said, and Shouyou felt a hand on his face. “Wait.”

Kenma's voice was firm, and spoken at regular speaking volume. In the quiet of the bedroom, that might as well have been shouted through a bullhorn. Shouyou dropped Kenma's shirt and stood up, suddenly worried he'd done something wrong.

The ache in his pants was  _killing_ him.

“We're...” Kenma started, but had to stop to catch his breath. “This is really quick. And if you keep doing that I'm not going to be able to stop.”

Shouyou was breathing in short little ragged puffs.

He  _almost_ let the words out of his mouth.

“ _I don't want to stop_.”

But he caught them in time. Partly because he didn't know if that was true—he had no idea what came next if they 'kept going', except that it probably involved stuff he'd need tutoring for. And partly because that wasn't only up to him.

Kenma said stop, and so he stopped.

He leaned forward and rested his head on Kenma's shoulder, his arms finding their way back around his waist. Gently, this time. Not a vise to squeeze their hips together.

Kenma did the same, his chin hooking around Shouyou’s shoulder and neck. 

“Yeah,” Shouyou said, head clearing as he took a few deep breaths. “I...I’m having trouble thinking straight.”

Kenma laughed at that, and at first Shouyou wasn’t sure why. They held on to each other for a while, not speaking. Just breathing. Shouyou could feel his feet starting to burn from being upright so long. He could feel the muscles in his back and legs starting to tremble from being used all day.

“You’re going home this afternoon,” Kenma said.

“Mm. Four o’clock.”

“And I’m exhausted.”

“Mm. Me too.”

“And I don’t want you to regret anything. Shouyou,” Kenma said, and he shifted in Shouyou’s arms so he was whispering in his ear. “I spent a long time thinking this would never happen and I don’t...I don’t want this to ruin anything. I don't want to go too fast all at once and scare you away. Okay?”

Shouyou didn’t quite understand, but he thought maybe that was what Kenma was getting at. He’d never done anything like this before. Not with a girl, and not with a boy. It  _felt_ like this is what he wanted to do, but he wasn’t sure. He just couldn’t figure out how to be sure.

He pulled his head back, and pressed his forehead to Kenma’s. Just like he did on the bridge.

“Okay,” he said. “Just...kiss me once more.”

Kenma laughed again, and fixed Shouyou with a long, deep, breathless kiss. Exactly the kind he liked best. And then he was finished, and Shouyou was standing in a daze.

“Sure you’re okay?” Kenma asked.

Shouyou nodded. Giddy.

“I think I’m out of energy, though.”

Kenma smiled at him. 

“Wow. _Shouyou_. Out of energy.”

Shouyou laughed, and planted one last quick peck on Kenma’s lips, then flopped down on to the edge of his bed. The mattress squeaked under him like it had last night, when they'd sat back-to-back, touching for the first time. 

“So, um...” Kenma said, and he hid his face behind his fingers. His other hand adjusted the bulge in his pants. “I’m just going to go...take a shower. And stuff. You can go right after, if you like.”

Shouyou looked down at his own bulge.

“That’s probably a good idea,” he said, pawing at it. “I’ll wait here.”

Kenma disappeared through the bathroom curtain.

Shouyou peeled himself out of his jacket and tossed it at his bag. Then he unbuttoned his dressy Tokyo shirt and unwrapped himself from it. The jeans were tight and uncomfortable, but they could wait until he was showered and...taken care of.

He lay down on his side, his eyes drooping almost completely closed, and stared at the bathroom curtain. It didn’t quite reach the floor, and from this low angle he could just make out Kenma’s bare feet. He saw them stride to the edge of the shower to start the water running. Saw them lift off the floor to let his black jeans come off. Saw them lift again to let his white underwear slide down. He kicked them out of view, deeper in to the bathroom, before his feet disappeared into the shower itself.

Shouyou rolled over on to his back.

The room was spinning.

His head was spinning.

He put his fingers to his lips. They were puffy—worn out from being used in a way he’d  _never_ done before. His dick was still straining against his underwear and pants, refusing to go down after it’d been teased so badly. His fingers and hands still felt like they had Kenma under them.

A yawn nearly split his face in half. He’d been awake almost twenty-six hours now. A solid six more than he’d ever managed before. 

He shut his eyes. Only for a second, he told himself.

But they didn’t open again for a long time.

Not until he heard the bathroom curtain open, and Kenma’s voice carry to him.

“All fixed,” he said.

Shouyou lulled his head to the side, drawn back from the brink of a deep sleep.

He was too tired. He couldn’t move any further. He wasn’t going to be able to get up, let alone stand under a shower for ten minutes. Hell, he could barely see through his slitted, heavy, crusty eyes.

But what he  _did_ see made him feel warm all the way through.

There was Kenma, bracketed by the bathroom door and lit from behind. Long blonde-and-black hair wet and clinging to his neck. His long fluffy sleeping pants were hitched up to his hips and tied tightly with the drawstring. And that was everything he was wearing.

Shouyou smiled at him, wishing like mad that his brain wasn’t shutting down faster than he could take the image in. He hoped he’d be able to remember it tomorrow. The long, subtle muscles. The sleek, tight, pale skin. The beautifully-placed bones that stuck out at his collar.

_This_ would make for an amazing dream.

His eyes closed down.

And he was asleep.

 

***

 

The sound of a phone ringing shocked Shouyou to life.

He blinked twice, his head lifting off his pillow, and tried his best to figure out where he was. His body was arranged some kind of weird way. He felt like he had more limbs than usual, and he weighed a bunch more than he should. 

Like...why was he lying on one hand, had his other hand flat against the bed, and a third hand resting on his tummy? Why did he have a third foot wedged in between his usual  _two_ feet? What was that warm and heavy feeling on his back?

By the time the phone rang a second time, though, he had it all figured out.

Not his hand. Not his feet. Not his skin.

Kenma’s. 

He craned his neck around.

Kenma was tucked in against him, tight and warm, wrapped around him, pressing into him. Shouyou barely had time to take it in and remember that morning—barely had time to register that Kenma still wasn’t wearing a shirt, and that this was his first time to really take the sight in—before Kenma stirred.

Shouyou’s stomach twitched as Kenma’s hand slid off it and reached for his phone. Shouyou sat up—his legs releasing Kenma’s foot—and watched as Kenma rolled over. He was all stretched out. A long, thin torso growing out of black sweat pants.

Kenma answered the call and put it on speaker.

“Kuroo?” he said.

“I’ve knocked five times,” Kuroo said. “Let me guess: you’re sleeping.”

“Knocked?” Kenma said.

Shouyou snapped upright, every muscle in his body suddenly tense. He looked toward Kenma’s door—no way to see inside. Then toward the window—the blinds were pulled all the way down. There was no way Kuroo could have seen them.

“ _Yes_ ,” Kuroo said. “Shrimpy’s train leaves in twenty-five minutes. Remember that?”

“Oh, shit,” Kenma said.

“Oh, shit!” Shouyou said.

“Right,” Kuroo said. “Shit. Hurry up!”

Shouyou scrambled for his bag, yanking the first t-shirt he found over his head and pushing his arms into it. Kenma leaped out of the bed, too, and dashed for his wardrobe.

“We’ll be there in a second,” he said.

And he hung up.

“It’s three thirty-five,” Kenma said, yanking on his own t-shirt. “We slept all day.”

“Gah, I’m sorry,” Shouyou said.

He stuffed his jacket and pants and every other thing he could think of into the bag. Luckily, he hadn’t brought much and packing was fast. 

“Not your fault,” Kenma said.

Shouyou plonked the bag onto Kenma’s bed, then rushed to the bathroom to rub some toothpaste on his teeth and make sure his hair didn’t look like he’d just woken up. He splashed some water on his face, squirted a bit of deodorant under each arm, and scooped up his toiletries bag.

That was everything.

“We'll make it,” Kenma said, checking his phone. “Just.”

He pulled his red Nekoma jacket around himself and started for the door. Shouyou zipped his bag for the final time and slung it over his shoulder. But it felt too fast. Just seconds ago he'd been asleep...he and Kenma had been  _cuddling_ . And he hadn't even had a chance to enjoy it.

He hadn't had a chance to do anything properly!

“Wait,” Shouyou said. And he snagged Kenma by the hand, and pulled him in to a tight hug. He made sure there wasn't a single part of them that wasn't touching. “This is our last one for a while.”

Kenma relaxed, and then wrapped his own hands around Shouyou. One set of fingers on his back. The other in his hair.

“I know,” he said.

Shouyou breathed in Kenma’s smell. Let it seep in to him. Detailed every last subtlety of it so he could remember it. 

He didn’t know what to say next. He could imagine Kuroo standing at the front door, tapping his foot and checking his phone. They only had seconds left before he got suspicious it was taking too long.

“Nationals,” Kenma said.

“Huh?”

“That's when we'll see each other next,” Kenma said. “We can talk about this properly then. In between time, we think. Sound good?”

Shouyou nodded, his chin bobbing against Kenma’s collarbone.

“Nationals,” he said. “Sounds good.”

Kenma squeezed him back.

“I'm sorry this is so fast.”

Three pounds from the front door, and Kuroo’s muffled voice, split them apart.

“ _Oi! Wake up and let’s go!_ ”

Shouyou grabbed his bag and followed Kenma out.

Out of his amazing room.

Out of his awesome house.

Out of his incredible city.

 

***

 

Half an hour into his trip home, Shouyou finally got it.

_I'm having trouble thinking straight_ , he'd said, and Kenma had laughed for some reason. Shouyou was exhausted at the time, and had a head full of sex, and couldn't put his finger on what was funny. The double meaning of the word 'straight', though, seemed more obvious from far away.

_Right_ , he thought.  _Not thinking straight. Because I was thinking gay_ .

And for some reason, the word struck him in a really funny way.

_Gay_ .

Somehow, in all the time he'd been in Tokyo, he hadn't given the concept of 'gay' a single thought. He hadn't thought once about how Kenma was gay. Hadn't thought about how the two of them kissing on the bridge was gay. Or how what they'd done in his bedroom was... _quite_ gay.

No matter how he chewed on it, he couldn't get it to taste right. It's not that it put him off, or made him feel ashamed, or weird. If what he'd done with Kenma made him gay, he didn't care—as long as nobody tried to make him stop. It's just that he'd never thought of himself as gay before, and it sort of didn't feel right to start now. It should take more  _effort_ than this to be gay. 

Yamaguchi was gay. Kenma was gay. Taiga was gay. Oikawa was gay. They'd all earned the right to call themselves that. It didn't seem fair that he could just...jump on the bandwagon like that. Without any hardship or trials or anything.

He let his head fall against the train window and sighed.

Really...what did it matter what he called it in his head, anyway?

He jolted as his phone buzzed in his pocket. When he yanked it out, he saw Yachi's name. Though even if he hadn't, he could've guessed it was her from the sheer amount of question marks.

 

_WELL???? Did you have fun??? Did Kenma like his present??_

 

He squeezed his eyes shut _._

He'd already decided exactly how much he was going to tell everyone at Karasuno. He took a breath and cast his mind back to how the Shouyou of two days ago would've answered this text, then let his fingers do the rest.

 

_THE MOST FUN. Tokyo is amazinggggggg. & ya he loved it obv. I chose it _ _(*^_ ω _^*)_

 

He wasn't used to lying. He never usually...needed to.

But this wasn't really lying. This was keeping a secret. A secret more important than telling Yachi he still had all three volumes of  _BLUSH!!_ in the bottom of his bag. She didn't need to know he'd had every chance to give it to Kenma, but chosen not to every single time. Or that he'd decided, sometime between pecking Kenma's lips on the bridge and trying to lick every inch of his stomach, that he actually needed  _BLUSH!!_ more than Kenma did right now. 

It was the one thing that had helped him navigate all this so far.

He wasn't quite ready to give up his only compass.

 

_GREAT. Now hurry up and get back here before Kageyama and Tsukishima rip each other to pieces._

 

He laughed at the text, and dropped his phone into his lap.

Back home.

He wondered if it'd feel the same way it did before. Back to volleyball, back to school work, back to his tiny and bare bedroom. Back to parental supervision and riding his bike everywhere. The tiny little town with the quiet streets and the distance between everyone.

He felt his phone buzz on his lap once more, but it wasn't Yachi this time. 

It was Kenma.

He liked the way his heart leaped when he saw the name.

 

_So to answer your question, I can say for sure now: you definitely don't smell like a wet dog._

 

And Shouyou laughed.

Somehow, it was better than anything else he could have said.

He closed his phone and let his head fall back against the seat. He'd think of something to reply with later, after he'd eaten and bathed and wasn't feeling so exhausted.

Karasuno and his family in Torono. Kenma on the other end of the phone. 

Two weeks until Nationals.

He could make it work.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND THAT'S IT for **Volume One: The Formula for Love**! Many many MANY thanks to everyone who has read, commented and kudosed this so far. It really does make things so rewarding when I can chat to so many of you. And it's never a bad thing to see that kudos counter tick upward.
> 
> There's going to be a super short break while I finish up a RL writing project, but we'll be back before you know it with **Volume 2: Experimentation**.
> 
> For anyone who hasn't already, you can try reading the prequel story [OUT!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5107319/chapters/11749094) to ease the wait! Hahaha.
> 
> THANKS GUYS!

**Author's Note:**

> As always, feel free to leave comments! One of the best parts of OUT! was all the conversations I got to have in the comments section. I always reply, so go ahead and say hi if you want to!


End file.
